Roald Dahl was born on September 13, 1916 in Wales. His mother died after giving birth to her second child. And his father died when he was four years old. When Dahl was 13, he went to a public school named Repton. But he didn’t like the school.
This was because the boys and the teachers at the school were very violent.
His experiences at the school later inspired him to write stories in which children fight against cruel adults. Those books include James and the Giant Peach (1961), Witches (1973), Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984), and Matilda (1988).
At 18, Dahl joined an expedition to Newfoundland, instead of entering university. During World War II, he served in the Royal Air Forces in Libya, Greece, and Syria. In 1943, he was a wing commander and worked for British Security Co-ordination in North America until 1945.

While staying in the US, he wrote his first children’s book, The Gremlins in 1943. And guess what? First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt read it to her grandchildren. She liked it so much that she invited him to have dinner with her and the President at the White House! It was a very exciting experience for him.
In 1945, Dahl returned to England. Seven years later, he met the famous actress Patricia Neal, and they married in 1953. They had five children. When his first child Olivia was born, he began making up stories to tell her each night at bedtime. He said, “If I didn’t have any children of my own, I would have never written books for children.”
Dahl’s life was not always easy. He had to deal with very serious and tragic illness in his family. In fact, Dahl had eight major operations and a few countless smaller ones throughout his life. However, he always kept a wonderful perspective on his life, which shines through in his writing. On November 23, 1990, Roald Dahl died in Oxford, England.