The Other Side of Roald Dahl

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THE OTHER SIDE OF ROALD DAHL


PART ONE (of three)

‘Whiffsy time-twiddling’

High over the Buckinghamshire village of Great Missenden, the morning sun casts its glow across the sloping, grassy churchyard that dips down towards the early bustle of the school run and commuter traffic. Shadows slide across flowers, toys and tributes of all kinds that mark the memories and emotions of many whose loved ones now lie untroubled by the frantic scrambling in the valley below. Extraordinarily large footprints lead off into the morning dew from the comfort of a warmly weathered circular seat inscribed with the names of Olivia, Tessa, Theo, Ophelia, Lucy, Neisha, Charlotte and Lorina.
Whoever the visitor was, their stride was as gigantic as their footprints. Closer examination reveals that the footprints are cast in stone and not, after all, transitory clues left by an early morning visitor paying their respects. Follow the footprints down, vainly trying to match the stride, and you will reach a polished granite memorial marked like many others with a small container of silk flowers.
Before you can read the inscription, you will, as likely as not, notice this memorial is not, after all, like many others. For this smooth dark green surface set into the gentle slope is scattered with an assortment of sweets: two damp cellophane wrappers revealing love hearts; a tube of Smarties; some chocolate bars in various stages of disintegration; a toffee or two; and perhaps a note accompanying one or more of the sugary gifts. For these sweets are both gifts and memorials - an ever-changing tributary collage created by the young (and sometimes not so young), who revere and continue to enjoy the everlasting magic and adventure they have been given by the man who now rests in peace in this parish churchyard. The footsteps, guiding the way, belong to the Big Friendly Giant, and they halt almost as if he were standing there, gazing at the inscription carved deeply into the stone:

ROALD
DAHL
13 September
1916
23 November
1990

By the Giant's side, those who choose, can see little orphan Sophie who shared the BFG's adventures which began in this very village of Great Missenden.

'What happens when a giant dies?' Sophie asked.
'Giants is never dying,' the BFG answered. 'Sometimes and quite
suddenly, a giant is disappearing and nobody is ever knowing where he goes to. But mostly us giants is simply going on and on like whiffsy time-twiddlers.' (The BFG, 1982, p.51)

Whatever brief moments of imaginative flight one may enjoy, courtesy of the genius of Roald Dahl, when you take time to look behind this most loved, successful and well-known children's writer; when you engage in a modest amount of 'whiffsy time-twiddling', you discover you are in the presence of a true hero.
Before the literary fame which was to transform his life and bring so much reading pleasure to children and adults everywhere, Roald Dahl had already proved himself an extraordinarily intricate, engaging, courageous and inventive character. Frighteningly diverse, he was able to turn his hand to almost anything he cared to and certainly always able to take control of the most difficult personal situations. Roald Dahl had the drive to pluck and push solutions through the darkest tunnels and out into the light.
To explain this side of Roald Dahl, we need to see him, not as a world famous author, the lone figure in his writing hut, sleeping bag around his legs, board across his lap, yellow pad and sharpened pencils at the ready, but as perceptive inventor, philanthropist, and, when the occasion warranted it, a tenacious fighter and deeply affectionate family man. It is only then, that all the rest makes sense, when his legacy is fleshed out beyond the confines of the book cover and film script.

'Childhood, Hot-Bottomed Fagging & Chocolate'.

Before we reach this 'other' Roald Dahl, we need to get to know the boy born in Llandaff, Wales on September 13th 1916. Harald Dahl and Sofie Hesselberg from Norway had married in 1911, Harald was the co-owner of a ship-broking business in Cardiff. Roald had four sisters but as a three year old was faced with two family deaths when his 8 year old sister Astri died of appendicitis and his father died of pneumonia, both in 1920. His mother, Sofie, was so precious to him. The importance of being loved and not being alone was a theme that was to occur frequently in his career as an author. He was always clear that his mother '....was the absolute primary influence on my own life. She had a crystal-clear intellect and a deep interest in almost everything under the sun. She was the matriarch, the materfamilias and her children radiated round her like planets round a sun.' (Memories with Food, 1991, pp 65/6)

Change matriarch to patriarch and we can begin to see in this observation an indication of what Roald himself would become to his own family. His intellect, fired by a vivid imagination, would lead not only to fantastic tales, but to Dahl the inventor, and is beautifully illustrated in the opening to his book of childhood and adolescent memories entitled 'My Year, (1993)

'When I was a little boy, I had a tiny boat made of tin (there was no plastic in those days) which had a very small clockwork motor inside it, and I used to play with it while I was having my bath. One day the tiny boat developed a leak in its hull and it filled with water and sank.
For many weeks after that, I would lie in my bath worrying about whether my own skin would develop a leak in it just as the little boat's hull had done, and I felt certain my body would fill with water and I would sink and die. But it never happened and I marvelled at the watertightness of the skin that covered my body.' (My Year, 1995 p.5)

This was a boy who, aged nine created a Conker Practising Machine, capable of taking on 6 conkers at a time. A boy who, excited by his Christmas gift of a Meccano outfit, decided not to follow the many examples of what marvels you can construct, but to create something that had never been built before and, more than likely - by any stretch of the Meccano imagination - has not been built since. By stretching a wire from the roof of his house, over the top of a footpath to a nearby fence (around 100 yards), he was able to use the special grooved wheel and metal struts to make a device capable of speeding down this sloping wire with a hanging cargo of five used Heinz soup cans - cans now filled to the brim with water. A string leading back to his eager hand would tilt the water out when jerked and, ideally, when passing over innocent pedestrians on the footpath.

'Soon two ladies dressed in tweed skirts and jackets and each wearing a hat, came strolling up the path with a revolting little Pekinese dog on a lead. I knew I had to time this carefully, so, when they were very nearly but not quite directly under the wire, I let my chariot go. Down she went, making a wonderful screeching-humming noise as the metal wheel ran down the wire and the string ran through my fingers at great speed.
Bombing from a height is never easy. I had to guess when my chariot was directly over the target, and when that moment came, I jerked the string.
The chariot stopped dead and the tins swung upside down and all the water tipped out. The ladies, who had halted and looked up on hearing the rushing noise of my chariot overhead, caught the cascade of water full in their faces. It was tremendous. A bulls-eye first time.' (My Year, 1993 p.63)

This one priceless example contains many of the traits of the adult Roald Dahl we are about to uncover: inventive intellect, doing something no-one else has done, practical joking, perceptive timing, risk taking and bombing.
He survived a tough boarding school education, fraught with bullying but glistening with sporting success, particularly boxing - it seems a contradiction that this tall 'soft-faced' lad who could box and play a good game of cricket and was excellent at squash, would become such a bullies' victim. But for bullies read 'Boazers' - these were 'career' bullies, part of the English public school system which thrived on the rules and rituals of 'fagging'. Perhaps we could even credit this bizarre system for encouraging his mind to ponder and wander, whilst warming the Boazers' frost covered outside toilet seat. He recalls Boazer Wilberforce's pearls of wisdom on taking charge of a satisfactorily winter-warmed seat prepared by Dahl, 'Some Fags have cold bottoms, and some have hot ones. I only use hot-bottomed Fags to heat my bog seat. I won't forget you.' (Boy, 1984, p.145)

What we can credit to his time at Repton is a love and amazing knowledge of chocolate. Inside the complex imagination of that teenage boy, who knows exactly when the seed was sown for the later creation of one of his most famous literary and film successes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? The famous Cadbury chocolate factory in an ingenious marketing initiative for its day, would send new chocolate bar creations for the boys of Repton to taste, test and comment on. Roald Dahl had found his forte and recalls a dream, 'I used to picture a long white room like a laboratory with pots of chocolate and fudge and all sorts of other delicious fillings bubbling away on the stoves, while men and women in white coats moved between the bubbling pots, tasting and mixing and concocting wonderful new inventions.' (Boy, 1984, p.134)
In this dream Roald would go on to create the most miraculous chocolate taste in the world. From that time onwards he kept his love of chocolate honed and always maintained that school history lessons would be better served by teaching the names, not of kings and queens and their reigns, but the names of chocolate bars and the dates they were created.
The clues are steadily emerging to understand this man's remarkable persona. A man of great practicality and adventure, Dahl opted for a real challenge rather than reading for a degree and at 17 joined the Public Schools Exploring Expedition to Newfoundland. Here was adventure, excitement and danger, wandering into uncharted territory, blank spaces on existing maps - perhaps he might find a gold mine, he thought.
He didn't, and in September 1934, aged eighteen, he joined the oil giant, Shell. Languishing in the London office, he was frustrated knowing that others were exploring the world on Shell's behalf. His patience was rewarded, however, when after 4 years of tolerating this (and many chocolate bars later - he turned their wrappings into a giant silver ball, a surreal calendar of being office-bound), he was posted to Dar es Salaam. Camera always by his side, Dahl used the opportunity to store up experiences that would come tumbling out later in his writing days.
It is no coincidence that the tarantula in a friend's shoe and the green mamba sliding across the floor would be fodder to his hugely successful adult writings such as Tales of the Unexpected.
Less unexpected was the declaration of war in 1939. Now 23, Dahl immediately joined the Royal Air Force in Nairobi. Here, with difficulty, he bent his lanky frame into the cockpit of a Tiger Moth and learnt to fly over the Kenyan Highlands. His Meccano bombing ingenuity as a boy now saw him flying over the Iraqi desert, no empty soup cans filled with water this time, but real weapons as he spent six months learning to shoot, navigate and dive-bomb. Later, trying to land an unfamiliar plane - a Gloster Gladiator- for re-fuelling, he crash-landed and was engulfed in flames. Roald Dahl had fractured his skull but managed to escape serious burn injuries. He was, however, temporarily blinded and remained swollen and in great pain for some time. With characteristic determination, he pushed to fly again with the now much depleted 80 Squadron and this time he would see action and emerge a hero. During April, 1941, flying a Hurricane, he took part in raids over Athens against the invading Germany military, resulting in dog-fights during which he succeeding in downing several enemy aircraft. Dahl is credited in the official records of having shot down six enemy aircraft which, in a hectic period of five weeks solid fighting, was of heroic status. He no doubt would have notched up more but blinding headaches from his earlier crash saw him reluctantly invalided out. Here were more experiences for the author-inside waiting to emerge.


'Taking the Mickey out of Disney: Dahl’s American adventures'

Following his heroic feats as a pilot, Dahl became bored. His imagination required feeding and so began an intense interest in collecting modern art and whilst his boredom was staved through this new passion and the celebrity network it encompassed, a new posting came through.
Dahl was appointed Assistant Air Attaché to the British Embassy in Washington, a post that would also connect him to the British Intelligence Services. His imagination would never go hungry again.
Dahl loved Washington and the celebrity party circuit in the States and women in particular loved him back. He was an injured fighter pilot hero, young, lanky, handsome, very witty and connected to the secret services, albeit very loosely and he had tales to tell.

All RAF pilots were familiar with gremlins - they waited until you were airborne and then out they would gleefully come, as this extract from Song of the Gremlins, attributed to the RAF Photographic Reconnaissance Unit testifies:

'White ones will wiggle your wingtips
Male ones will muddle your maps
Green ones will guzzle your Glycol
Females will flutter your flaps
Pink ones will perch on your Perspex
And dance pirouettes on your prop
There's a special middle aged Gremlin
Who'll spin on your stick like a top'.

During this time he became acquainted with the famous novelist C.S. Forester of Captain Hornblower fame who encouraged Dahl to write about his experiences. The result was his first foray into professional authorship with 'Shot Down Over Libya' which appeared anonymously in the US magazine Saturday Evening Post in August 1942.
But Dahl hooked a far bigger fish when his knowledge of gremlins reached the ears of a certain Walt Disney and now Hollywood was keen to meet this extraordinary story teller.
Snow White, Pinocchio and Fantasia were to give way to light weight propaganda and training movies during these war years, but now Disney wanted Dahl's gremlins. Except they weren't Dahl's gremlins; they belonged to the RAF who, to a man, claimed they existed. Gremlin Lore as recounted by Dahl reached the bizarre stage of Disney attempting to confirm actual sightings, descriptions and even accent. It was a masterpiece of a spoof with Dahl pulling as many legs as he could. When Disney's animators at Burbank tried to capture their likeness. Dahl told them,
'I am very glad to see that you had no definite views about Gremlins not wearing bowler hats, but their omission in your drawings did cause a little trouble.' Disney titles for the project ranged from 'Gremlin Gambols,' 'Gay Gremlins' and 'We've got Gremlins'.
'Stalky', as Walt Disney called Dahl, was in his element. Living an expenses paid life in Hollywood and pulling so many legs it's a wonder Burbank didn't collapse. In the event, the film was never made but the story was published as a picture book in 1943 entitled, 'Walt Disney: The Gremlins (A Royal Airforce Story by Flight Lieutenant Roald Dahl)
The author inside had finally made his debut - this was Roald Dahl's first book. He signed with a literary agent and articles came tumbling out for the likes of Harpers, Cosmopolitan and The Ladies Home Journal.
Dahl was on his way to fame, fortune and Great Missenden but there were many tragedies to overcome on the way.



(Continued in parts 2 & 3)




Written by h2g2 Researcher (nickname) slipperyramparts in three parts

Extracts from Road Dahl’s works are by kind permission of
of Dahl & Dahl Ltd.


THE OTHER SIDE OF ROALD DAHL

PART TWO (of 3)

Philanthropy, marriage, death and despair


'The English village Idyll'

Roald’s mother Sofie had moved from Kent to Buckinghamshire, firstly to Grendon Underwood, then to Grange Farm, Great Missenden and then to Amersham. Roald settled in at his mother's Grendon home determined to continue as an author. As she moved, Roald moved with her. At the Amersham address and as restless as ever for other interests, he took up greyhound breeding with the local butcher Claud Taylor. This friendship led to other pastimes such as tickling trout and poaching pheasant. The contrast with Hollywood couldn't have been greater and brought Dahl into the Buckinghamshire village idyll he was to adore for the rest of this life. Sometimes he pretended not to enjoy it because that always got a reaction and he thrived on reaction. As he increased his output of short stories for adults and developed broadcasting contacts with the BBC, he was relentless searching for a niche he couldn't quite identify. He also still suffered back pain from his flying accident which would always remain with him. Whilst the author blossomed, there was another passion inside Dahl. Together with an equally passionate, influential, multi-millionaire friend from his Washington days, Charles Marsh, a newspaper and oil tycoon, he created a charitable trust in 1949 called the Public Welfare Foundation. This philanthropic work was originally targeted at 200 needy families in Limehouse, London, to assist the acquisition of education and medical care. Philanthropy continues to flourish in his name under the Roald Dahl Foundation based in Great Missenden, and aimed at the whole of the UK, and nowadays focussing on grants for literacy, and the medical areas of haematology and neurology. The original Public Welfare Foundation, however, was quite an amazing achievement and a tribute to Dahl's caring nature - a trait not often enough realised as it could be swamped by his penetrating, jagged humour and satirical wit. For example, rejecting his friend Marsh's offer of vitamins to give to the poor, Roald is claimed to have said that the poor, 'do not give a f*** for vitamins and do not understand them, they wouldn't eat them even if
they were told they were aphrodisiacs.'

'Love & Marriage'

At 35, Dahl found himself back in America 'house-sitting' for Charles Marsh and writing hard. His thoughts turned to Buckinghamshire as he wrote a series of local stories under the titles, The Ratcatcher and Rummins. He was, however, receiving his fair share of publishers' rejection letters which displeased him. What did boost his ego and turn his head was his meeting with Hollywood actress Patricia Neal. It was at a party hosted by Lillian Hellman and she provocatively seated them together. If she had a plan, it worked and they became inseparable and married at Trinity Church, New York in July 1953.
Great Missenden visits followed to meet the Dahl family (Roald's sister Else and her husband John lived nearby) but New York soon claimed them back. Patricia's career was not only based in the States but her fairly substantial income put her as the main wage-earner. Roald was writing but not earning a great deal from his efforts. News of Pat's pregnancy in the summer of 1954 brought them back to Great Missenden where they bought 'Little Whitefield', now famous as Gipsy House. This was to become the life-long base of that other author waiting to emerge - Roald Dahl, children's author.
Meanwhile, as a short-story writer, Dahl was doing exceptionally well, his macabre adult humour scoring a record publishing run for 'Someone Like You.' The New York Times compared him to Saki and
O Henry, Maupassant and Maugham. To his satisfaction it won a Mystery Writers of America Award. On 20th April 1955, Olivia Dahl was born in a Boston Hospital. Roald was elated, his friends impressed by his rapid transformation into a doting father figure. This was to be a hectic period of trans-Atlantic crossings between Great Missenden and New York, whilst Roald continued writing and Pat got back into acting.
At 'Little Whitefield', Dahl looked after Olivia, and, with his practical nature at the fore, built his now famous writing hut in the substantial garden of this lovely Georgian house. This was his writer's 'womb' as he termed it. It was a place to disappear from one world to create another.
He also added the equally famous Gipsy Caravan as a restoration project. Whilst Dahl's practical side flourished, the creative juices were not delivering at the same pace and depth - he sensed that another direction awaited him but he could not tie it down. Pat was busy in America and Roald was completely absorbed in establishing their Great Missenden home, and in particular, a vegetable garden. Onions became his passion. Indeed, vegetables and fruit were one day to be transformed into all kinds of new varieties in children's fictional worlds yet to emerge - quite literally, the seeds were being sown for that moment when snozzcumbers and flying giant peaches would be known the world over.

'Dahl the Dad'

In April 1957, Tessa Dahl was born in an Oxford Hospital.
The Dahls were a close family, particularly as Roald's mother Sofie, now in her seventies, was also living nearby in Great Missenden with Roald's sister Else and her husband John at a house called 'Whitefields'. Pat continued to be frantically busy making films and working in live theatre.
Elstree to Broadway to Missenden to Hollywood became familiar routes and then once more she was pregnant. By the summer of 1960, baby Theo joined his two sisters.
Dahl's short stories were becoming increasingly popular in England and good reviews led to satisfactory sales. Ironically, American reviewers were becoming less kind to him but the adult public on both sides of the Atlantic loved him and his short story collections such as 'Kiss Kiss' flew off the shelves in the early 1960's and began to interest European publishers. Then he put his first step on the bottom rung of what was to be his most successful literary ladder. His early sense that there was another direction, that there was another author inside, now had the necessary catalysts to release the other Roald Dahl.

Olivia and Tessa, now five and three, quite literally set their father's imaginative chemistry fizzling and bubbling with joyful, scary stories especially created just for them. What could be more enthralling at a cosy bedtime moment than when Dad recounted the story of orphan James, escaping his cruel aunts by hiding in a magic peach which falls to earth squashing and killing the pursuing aunts. Then by air and by sea the magic peach takes James and his new found insect friends to America, ending up on top on the Empire State Building. He was to turn this bedtime story into the manuscript for James and the Giant Peach but first, Roald Dahl and his family were about to enter one of four very long and painful episodes - dark tunnels that required all of Roald's undisputed ingenuity to reach for the light at the end.


'Necessity is the Mother of Invention'


It was December 5th 1960, Roald was in America working on 'The Centipede Song' for James and the Giant Peach when Pat burst into the room with devastating news. Cosy in his pram, four month old Theo had been out with his nanny who,tightly clutching Tessa's hand, was on her way to collect Olivia from nursery school whilst Pat enjoyed some shopping. In a sickening instance of carelessness, a taxi-cab rounded the corner just as the nanny crossed the road pushing the pram ahead of her. Screams and screeching filled the air as the taxi shunted and crushed the pram into the side of a bus. Theo was horrifically injured and rushed to hospital. To make matters worse a second instance of carelessness occurred when a nurse overdosed this frail and seriously injured baby with an anticonvulsant which had to be pumped back out. Theo hung on to life but developed hydrocephalus which created a build-up of cerebrospinal fluid pressure to his brain.
At this stage, understandably, 99.9% of parents would have to watch and wait whilst the medical experts took charge. Roald represented that point one of a percentage of a parent who could not do that.
Although Theo would live, the constant draining of fluid from his brain by a small tube and inefficient shunt valve was not reliable. Any blockages could create blindness and fevers and possibly worse.
Dahl reached into his creative practical depths and, like the boy who exhibited such ingenuity with a meccano set in a fun moment, the adult, in this most serious of times, was determined to re-invent the mechanics of this clumsy technology. As a great organiser, networker and inventor all rolled into one, together with Pat, he worked to raise money for Theo's exorbitant medical bills, delivered the finished manuscript for James and the Giant Peach and then retreated to the relative safety of Great Missenden. Theo rested at home, the inefficient shunt inside his head of great concern to Roald and Pat as it had to be replaced by invasive surgery eight times over a thirty month period.
Tessa was enrolled at the local Gateway nursery school and Olivia went to nearby Godstowe, just outside High Wycombe. In these early days of Theo's recovery, Dahl, the inventor re-emerged. He remembered the times that he used to go to Amersham to fly model gliders, making the acquaintance of Stanley Wade, a hydraulic engineer, also a keen model plane flyer. This turned Roald's mind more than ever to the possibility of working with Stanley on improving the valve technology that was so crucial to Theo and many others like him. The Great Ormond Street doctor treating Theo, Kenneth Till, shared Dahl's concerns for better technology. Between Wade, Till and Dahl, sketches and ideas flowed as they sat at the kitchen table at 'Little Whitefield', or met in Stanley's machine shop near High Wycombe.
Within little more than a year and a half, they had not only patented the Wade-Dahl-Till Valve, and been featured in the foremost medical journal, The Lancet, but had brought it out as a working product on the medical market at cost price, (they all agreed not to take a profit), and it became a world-leader able to safely relieve conditions such as Theo's. Fortunately, Theo was to get much better over the next few years and no longer needed such a device but many thousands of other children
across the world did.

'Charlie is born, but death takes its toll'

During the early 1960's Pat was happily ensconced in their Buckinghamshire home, now renamed Gipsy House, enjoying village life with her newly-minted children's author, and their three children.
The book James and the Giant Peach, still only available in the United States, had sold a staggering 6,500 copies - a great success.
Roald's Repton days began to invade his writing hut in the smell, texture and fantasy of chocolate and those bubbling laboratory vats he had dreamt of as a teenager.
'Charlie's Chocolate Boy' which he had already submitted as a work in progress just prior to Theo's accident in New York was now retitled and revised as 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'. He was hopeful of even greater success with this new story. But, no sooner out of Theo's tunnel, the family were plunged back again into dark days. An outbreak of measles at Godstowe caught up with Olivia and despite emergency medical care, she died. It was November 17th 1962 and the family mourned her so deeply as she was laid to rest in Little Missenden.
Dahl withdrew into himself and we can never know what torments he endured in his 'writer's womb' and at Olivia's grave-side. Pat was equally devastated but also concerned about Roald's mental condition.
He needed to know that heaven contained dogs for Olivia to be with and
not just humans - and sought ecclesiastical advice from the Archbishop of Canterbury, his old Repton headmaster. He was angry not to get the confirmation he sought. Writing children's fiction no longer featured in his thoughts. Pat, on the other hand needed to be busy, to cope with her mental anguish and she threw herself into as many roles as she could land both television and film. A year later, Pat was pregnant once more.



(Continued in part 3)




Written by h2g2 Researcher (nickname) Slipperyramparts in three parts

Extracts from Road Dahl’s works are by kind permission of
of Dahl & Dahl Ltd.





THE OTHER SIDE OF ROALD DAHL

PART THREE (of 3)


CRUELEST FATE & TRUEST LOVE


'Dahl the most remarkable stalwart'.

Ophelia was born in May 1964. Theo was much better now the shunt had been totally removed, and Roald began story telling again, this time to Tessa and Theo. The world of children's fiction, however, was soon to taste the wonders of Mr. Willy Wonka and his mysterious chocolate factory. 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', was published in America in September 1964 - the first print run of 10,000 copies sold within four weeks. The second rung of his new ladder had been reached.
Pat's fame had also been growing and her love of their Great Missenden home and being with her family made being away in the States difficult for her to sustain. However, her income was substantial compared to Roald at that time and could not be forfeited. The film Hud, with Paul Newman, had the film critics acclaiming her performance for which she received an Oscar. Hollywood was pulling her back.
Both Pat and Roald were at new beginnings in terms of international fame and recognition yet, to Dahl's considerable annoyance, UK publishers had still to be persuaded to publish James and the Giant Peach or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. By February the following year, there were still no takers for the new Roald Dahl, and the family followed Pat to Hollywood for her latest film role with John Wayne called Seven Women. Only Roald and Pat, of course, knew she was pregnant once more but no-one could have known about the third, dreadful, dark tunnel ahead.
Only four days into the shoot, she was enjoying sharing bathing Tessa with the family nanny when a thunderbolt of a pain tore through her head. Roald did not hesitate for one moment and immediately contacted the neurosurgeon that had dealt with Theo, Charles Carton. Within the space of that phone call, Pat was unconscious, her body convulsing. In hospital, she murmured, 'Who is in this house? What are the names of the people in this house please?' And then she slipped into a coma. Pat was pregnant and close to death; it was a stark reality.
In all, Pat had suffered three strokes and Carton's team worked through the night to remove the heamorrhaged blood threatening her brain. This operation severed the temporal lobe which controls speech and movement. It was a gamble to save her, but, should she survive, her condition would be a serious one. Survive she did but it took over two agonizing weeks before she came round. Amid the family's unbridled joy at her recovery, her transformation was truly startling.
Wearing an eye patch, unable to speak, unable to move her right side, her hair cruelly shaved away, her mouth twisted to a slight curl; it was a difficult image to store in place of the real Patricia Neal, Oscar-winning Hollywood actress and mother to her three surviving children. More important, she was still pregnant. Roald, the ultimate patriarch came to the fore, and took charge of who could and could not see Pat and set about organizing her recovery because he could not envisage anything other than a full recovery. He would lead them all back into that light at the end of the tunnel once more and that light would be in Buckinghamshire not California.

'A village pulls together'.

Great Missenden saw a dejected and depressed Pat. She had lost everything that made her a beautiful Hollywood actress - her looks, her voice and her memory and, as if things couldn't be any worse, her right leg was now encased in a brace.
Roald pushed and prodded her into village walks, conversations and shopping - he was convinced that softly, softly would not work and for some appeared to be over-zealous, even cruel.
Village neighbours were recruited to help Pat learn to read again but of more immediate importance at that time was the safe delivery of her baby. In surgeon's gown and mask, Roald watched the birth of their daughter Lucy Neal Dahl on 4th August 1965. Now Lucy was safe and healthy, Roald orchestrated his master plan. He needed to work and to bring in money and to realise his prediction that Pat would make a full recovery. Luckily work came quickly in the form of an offer to write the screenplay for a James Bond movie - You only Live Twice. Roald took up the challenge.
Village neighbour, Valerie Eton-Griffiths, who he had learnt had recently recovered from a thyroid complaint, received a phone call 'out of the blue' from Roald asking if she would 'work' with Pat.
Unclear what 'work' meant in this context, Valerie recounts,
'I came down to Gipsy House and there was Pat sitting at the kitchen table staring - the saddest face you've ever seen. I did not know what to do but for some strange reason when Pat saw me walk through the doorway, I knew I was going to help her.'
She couldn't have been more perfect as Pat's saviour. In fact Valerie worked with Pat for five days a week for the next two years, transforming her abilities to speak and enjoy life once more.
Valerie's experience with Pat not only led to their deep and continuing friendship, but she went on to pioneer The Chest and Heart Association which became the Volunteer Stroke Service that continues to undertake so much invaluable assistance to stroke patients today. Even the present-day aims of the VSS reflect exactly what Valerie had made possible for Pat during those dark days in the mid 1960's, i.e.: 'improving quality of life by building confidence and improving morale.' Of Roald, Valerie recalls, 'I thought it was a magnificent effort,the way he worked and managed Pat and the children - he took over the lot.'
In fact, the ever-inventive Roald arranged for Pat and Valerie to go to Hollywood to make an information film called Stroke/Counter Stroke to show the world that recovering from such a severe set-back can be achieved. Road had firmly, but safely negotiated their way out from that dreadful tunnel.


'Death, Divorce & Marriage: Reaching the top of the ladder'


The film, You Only Live Twice, was a smash and Road could quite rightly bask in his script-writing glory and thanks to Valerie, Pat was well enough to take on a film role in early 1968, less than 3 years since her stroke. It was called The Subject Was Roses. Valerie worked with her as script-prompter. Thanks to Pat's talent as an actress and Valerie's sheer hard work on script prompting, Pat was nominated for an Academy Award. In the event her co-star got it, but what an achievement by Pat & Valerie - no award was needed to appreciate that.
Sadly, on 17th November, 1967, the anniversary of Olivia's death, Roald's beloved mother Sofie died aged eighty-two. Roald himself was in extreme pain from his old plane crash injury and it seemed his ever stalwart spirit was fading. Even he could only take so many knocks.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang appeared to come to his rescue when his second venture into film script work was commissioned. Was he now on another new rung of the ladder? As it turned out, he wasn't. Script disputes between Roald and the director led to Dahl disowning it.
In fact the next few years were characterized by Dahl pushing to enhance his own film-scripting reputation but finding working with directors often as volatile as himself who had the power to alter and criticize his work, a major irritant. Roald regained his stride with the 1970 publication of best-seller, Fantastic Mr. Fox, a book he dedicated to the memory of Olivia. During the 1970's stormy times start to build.

Roald's frustration with UK publishers reluctant to fully launch him in his home country was understandable given his emerging US successes.
They certainly acknowledged and published Dahl, the writer of adult stories, but continued to give the impression they thought he was merely masquerading as a writer for children. Even Dahl himself was confused about how to balance the two genres and continued to attack both. He needed his definitive UK success badly. Stormy times also began to characterise his marriage to Pat.
She had been steadily working to rebuild her career and had now added TV commercials to her repertoire.
They bickered, argued, chased their own careers, came back together, bickered and argued - the spiral of a collapsing marriage spun and spun. Perhaps they had been through too much together - too many dark tunnels - and they were plain tired.
Roald was in pain, his back and hips could be agonising and his often abrasive manner not always eliciting the empathy he secretly craved. His stern outer-shell was a formidable amour against soft intimacy. Even the children did not see their father as a 'cuddler'
Granddaughter Sophia Dahl was later to recall; 'He was not a big hugger.'
The storms crackled and broke when Roald met Felicity Crosland.
Felicity, Liccy to her friends, was responsible for organising Pat's wardrobe for the Maxim coffee television commercials. Emotionally it was both a complex and engaging time as Liccy became a friend of the family at Gipsy House and gradually more than that to a smitten Roald. Liccy found him very romantic, his family found him wanting in his honesty about his feelings for both Pat and Liccy.
Meanwhile, Roald continued pushing his UK publishers and by 1975, Danny The Champion of the World was in the bookshops, followed in 1977 by The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. In the same year, Roald's physical pain was eased somewhat by a hip-replacement. His mental anguish, however about the future of his marriage, and his relationship with Liccy, continued to complicate life. It was now 1979; he retreated to his famous writing hut, sleeping bag around his legs, writing board across his lap, pencils and yellow pad to hand, souvenir hip-bone on his desk, and became the ultimate children's author once more. One year later he had created, The Twits, George's Marvellous Medicine and the foundation for what would become Revolting Rhymes. The 1980 was a watershed in Roald Dahl's future both personally and professionally.
Pat and Roald divorced in 1983 and Liccy and Roald were married that same year. Liccy and her three children, Neisha, Charlotte and Lorina were now firmly part of Roald's life alongside Tessa & Theo, now in their 20's, and teenagers Ophelia & Lucy. Pat was living at Martha's Vineyard in California. Professionally, Roald flourished and from that hut at the end of a pleached lime walk across the garden from Gipsy House emerged the works that would finally place him at the top of the ladder of children's fiction. The BFG, The Witches, and Matilda.
It was also the period when the superb illustrations of Quentin Blake, already used in some of Dahl's early work, came into their own, and are now inextricably welded into the Dahl magic.
Also in 1983, Dahl won the Whitbread Prize for The Witches, a book he dedicated to Liccy and he generously donated the £3,000 prize to a children's hospice in Oxford. His philanthropic character would always surface where children were involved, personally ensuring that his donation went to buy equipment for disabled children or into research for neurological disorders and dyslexia. By the late 1980's Roald had the great satisfaction of seeing virtually everything he had so painstakingly created and crafted, published all around the world and in many languages.
The international fame he had always sought came in abundance and the family gatherings at Gipsy House were now ones of much more contentment and implicit conciliation. Roald was a familiar figure in the village and much sympathy was elicited when in 1985, he had two operations for cancer of the bowel which left him debilitated. In fact Roald was becoming ill with leukemia. A fourth and final tunnel lay ahead. It was 1990, Roald continued writing and any rift that had existed between himself and Pat or Liccy and Pat, was now healed as Pat flew over for Theo's thirtieth birthday. She would never see Roald again.
Tragic events were still to haunt them as Liccy's twenty-six year old daughter Lorina died from a brain tumour and less than eight months later, that autumn, in agonising pain, Roald was in a Oxford hospital very seriously ill, the family in great distress. Roald Dahl died from a rare blood disorder on 23rd November 1990. He was 74.


'Dahl’s English Village Legacy & beyond: A Galaxy of Dreams'

In his memory, two major Buckinghamshire based creations have been constructed, everyone involved somehow conscious of this punctilious world famous children's author looking over their shoulders to check what they are doing in his name. Liccy has no doubt that he would have loved the Roald Dahl Museum in Aylesbury that opened in 1996. It is constructed for children not for adults who are certainly not allowed to crawl along Fantastic Mr. Fox's tunnel but can possibly peer into The Giant Peach with their children's permission. In the village he loved, is a very special creation that opened in June 2005. It is the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre - a tribute to his working life and there to promote his favorite of causes, literacy and literature for children.
It is housed in a cleverly restored old coaching inn, its historical facade now brightened by an image of the BFG looking towards the very orphanage windows into which he blew his dreams and where his adventures with Sophie began.
'If you is really wanting to know what I am doing in your village, the BFG said, 'I is blowing a dream into the bedroom of those children.' (The BFG, 1982, p. 41)

Across the world, this remarkable author & children's hero, has blown a galaxy of dreams into children's lives and given them literary enjoyment beyond measure.

The sun slowly relinquishes its command over the day, the last flickers of its gaze leaving a warming caress over the circular seat so lovingly inscribed to the children he loved.
Carved into the paving slabs that are set around the base of the seat is a very special rhyme that requires the reader to walk around each of the children's dedicated seats starting from Olivia, past Tessa and Theo and onto Ophelia, then Lucy and Neisha, to Charlotte and finally to Lorina.

'We have tears in our eyes
As we wave our goodbyes
We so loved being with you we three
So do please now and then
Come and see us again
The Giraffe and Pelly and me,'

As you ponder the significance of this special family tribute, a last glance down to the polished granite memorial reveals yet another change of scene to the tableaux of affection that continue to move across its surface. Three giant onions nestle next to a butterfly on a stick and a small bag of sand and sea-shells.
Wedged by the bag is a hand-written note covered in children's signatures.It is a note that only children can create - one of great simplicity yet hosting emotions of startling depth and profundity. It reads,

'We send you a few grains of sand from the Mediterranean Coast - this blue and hot sea that has always been the origin of such civilizations. If you could put some of that sand on the grave where Roald rests our memories stay in every one of its grains
Lots of kisses
6th Level class
Cami del Mig School
Barcelona, Spain.'

Rest in Peace - Roald Dahl 1916-1990



The End



Written by h2g2 Researcher (nickname) slipperyramparts in three parts


Extracts from Road Dahl’s works are by kind permission of
of Dahl & Dahl Ltd.

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