Charlie and The Chocolate Factory
Charlie and The Chocolate Factory
Charlie and The Chocolate Factory
Year: 1964
Author Biography:
Roald Dahl was born in the district of Llandaff of the city of Cardiff, in Wales, on
September 13, 1916, of Norwegian parents, Harald Dahl and Sofie Magdalene
Hesselberg of Dahl. They imposed the name of Roald in honor of the explorer Roald
Amundsen, considered a national hero of Norway during those times.
When Roald was just three years old, his sister Astrid died of appendicitis and a few
weeks later his father, Harald, died, a victim of pneumonia, at the age of fifty-seven.
Despite her widowhood, her mother preferred to keep the family in Wales to return
to Norway to live with their relatives, to fulfill the desire of her husband that their
children were educated in British schools.
Roald attended the cathedral school in Llandaff. At the age of eight, Roald Dahl
and four of his friends were whipped by the director after putting a dead mouse in
a candy jar (specifically, of inflamofletes) in a neighborhood store, punishment that
his mother considered excessive, removing him from the school. When he was nine
years old, Roald Dahl was sent to St. Peter's School, a private school in the coastal
city of Weston-super-Mare, which he attended from 1923 to 1929. From the age of
thirteen he was educated at Repton School, in Derbyshire , where he was assistant
to the prefect, he became captain of the fives school team and developed his
interest in photography. During his years in Repton, Cadbury, a chocolate factory,
occasionally sent boxes of his new products to school to be tested by the students.
Dahl used to dream of inventing a new chocolate bar that would be the
astonishment of Mr. Cadbury himself, which inspired him to write his second book for
children, Charlie and the chocolate factory.
On September 19, 1940, Dahl would fly his Gladiator from Abu Suwiur, in Egypt, to
Amiriya to refuel, and then to Fouka, Libya, for a second charge. From there he
would fly to the 80 squadron track, fifty kilometers south of Mersah Matruh. In the
final stretch, he could not find the runway and, short of fuel and with the night falling,
he was forced to attempt a landing in the desert. Unfortunately, the landing gear
hit a rock and the plane crashed. Roald fractured his skull, broke his nose and went
blind. He managed to crawl away from the burning plane, and he fainted. Later,
he wrote about the accident in his first published work. In an investigation of the RAF
about the event, it was discovered that the location to which he had been ordered
to fly was completely incorrect, having been sent to an area between the British
and Italian forces.
He died of leukemia on November 23, 1990, at his home, Gipsy House, in Great
Missenden, Buckinghamshire, at the age of seventy-four and was buried in the
cemetery of the parish of St. Peter and St. Paul. In his honor, the Roald Dahl Children's
Gallery was opened at the Bucks County Museum in nearby Aylesbury. Dahl's
solidarity commitments in the fields of neurology, hematology and literacy have
been continued after his death through the Roald Dahl Foundation. In June 2005,
the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Center was opened in Great Missenden to
celebrate the work of Roald Dahl and advance his efforts in literacy.