Not many people get a chance to look back on their life like that. So it really was a very up to date diary. He wrote these letters home from school every week. It meant that Roald had this direct connection back to what his life was like when he was nine or ten years old. His mother kept every single one of those letters. We actually have all of the letters that Roald Dahl wrote to his mother, from when he was aged 9 at school in 1926 all the way up to 1967. That’s what made him famous first of all.” “Roald Dahl started his life as an author by writing macabre short stories. So he had that from a very young age, which helped. Right from a very young age, she made up stories for them and told all the Dahl children fairy stories. On the other hand, he always talks about his mother being a great influence. Some of it is definitely an innate talent. I think that was partly because he had a kind of childish mind himself.ĭo you think that skill was an innate talent or a result of particular experiences in his own life that gave him the ability to connect with children like that? He just had this really amazing innate contact with the child’s mind. He always knew children would love to hear about adults getting their comeuppance.
He knew exactly what to say to them and how to make them laugh and what they would want to hear. He’s got this amazing skill with creating a tone that makes children feel like he’s talking directly to them, and that they’re not stupid and that they can cope with scary stories, with horrible giants who have horrible names like the Fleshlumpeater in The BFG. The stories are dark and they’re a little bit more adult in their themes, but still absolutely aimed at children. It’s showing children the dark side of a gruesome or funny story.Īnother reason I think children have really loved his books for years and years is that Roald Dahl doesn’t talk down to them. Some quite dark things pop up, like children being turned into mice. And he never lost those gruesome roots throughout all of his children’s books. That’s what made him famous first of all. Roald Dahl started his life as an author by writing macabre short stories.