60 Fun Facts About Roald Dahl

In which country was Roald Dahl born?

He was born at Villa Marie in Llandaff, Cardiff, and a plaza in Cardiff Bay is now named after him.

Dahl's parents were immigrants from which country?

He spent most childhood summers with his mother's family there, and his first language was Norwegian.

Dahl was named after which famous explorer?

Amundsen had beaten Scott to the South Pole in 1911, five years before Dahl was born.

Which children's author, his childhood idol, did the six-year-old Dahl meet at her Lake District home?

The meeting at Hill Top was dramatised in the 2020 TV film Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse.

In the 'Great Mouse Plot of 1924', eight-year-old Dahl and his friends put a dead mouse in a jar of what?

The 'mean and loathsome' shopkeeper Mrs Pratchett later inspired one of the villains in Matilda.

Which Matilda villain was inspired by Mrs Pratchett, the sweet-shop owner from Dahl's childhood?

A prank in Trunchbull's water jug echoes the mouse plot; Emma Thompson played her in the 2022 musical film.

What is the title of Dahl's autobiography about his childhood?

He also recorded his one unhappy Norwegian memory there: having his adenoids removed without anaesthetic at about eight.

How tall was Dahl as an adult?

He captained the squash team at Repton and also played cricket, football and golf.

Which chocolate company sent new bars to Dahl's school for testing, inspiring Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

Dahl dreamed of inventing a bar that would win the praise of Mr Cadbury himself.

After school, Dahl joined which oil company and was posted to East Africa?

He was the youngest of the tiny team of Englishmen running the company in Tanganyika, and met black mambas and lions on his rounds.

Which obsolete biplane fighter was Dahl flying when he crashed in the Libyan desert in 1940?

He had received no combat training on the type; an inquiry later found he had been sent to entirely the wrong location.

For how long was Dahl blind after his 1940 crash fractured his skull?

In hospital in Alexandria he fell in love with a nurse's voice, and out of love once he could see her.

Dahl believed which event was the source of his creative genius?

He wrote about the crash in his very first published story.

Dahl flew his first aerial combat in April 1941, alone over the city of Chalcis, in which country?

The RAF had only 18 combat aircraft in Greece at the time; Dahl shot down a Ju 88 on each of his first two days.

How many confirmed aerial victories did Dahl score, qualifying him as a flying ace?

Post-war research cross-referenced with Axis records confirmed the tally; he may have scored more in the chaotic Battle of Athens.

In 1942 Dahl was posted to Washington, D.C. in what role?

He hated it at first, calling it 'a most ungodly unimportant job' after coming straight from the war.

Which British novelist asked Dahl to jot down RAF anecdotes, then published them as Dahl's first story?

Dahl called it 'A Piece of Cake'; The Saturday Evening Post retitled it 'Shot Down Over Libya' even though he was never shot down.

How much did The Saturday Evening Post pay Dahl for his first published story in 1942?

That was worth roughly $20,000 in today's money, and launched his writing career.

Which future James Bond author worked alongside Dahl promoting Britain's interests in wartime America?

Dahl later wrote the screenplay for the Bond film You Only Live Twice, adapted from Fleming's novel.

Dahl passed intelligence to the Canadian spymaster William Stephenson, who was known by what codename?

Stephenson's British Security Coordination was part of MI6; when embassy officials sent Dahl home, Stephenson sent him back with a promotion.

What was Dahl's first children's book, published in 1943?

Eleanor Roosevelt read it to her grandchildren and Walt Disney commissioned a film that was never made.

Which Hollywood actress did Dahl marry in 1953?

The marriage lasted 30 years; the couple were played by Glenda Jackson and Dirk Bogarde in a 1981 film.

Dahl helped develop the Wade-Dahl-Till valve to treat which condition, after his son Theo was hit by a taxi?

Built with a hydraulic engineer and a Great Ormond Street neurosurgeon, the shunt valve was used on almost 3,000 children.

Roald Dahl's eldest daughter died aged seven in 1962 from complications of which disease?

He wrote 'Measles: A Dangerous Illness' in 1988 urging parents to vaccinate their children.

To whom is The BFG dedicated?

The book came out in 1982, twenty years after her death.

The heroine of The BFG is named after which member of Dahl's family?

Sophie Dahl went on to become a model, author and cookbook writer.

What was the name of Dahl's home in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, from 1954 until his death?

His second wife Felicity moved in after their 1983 wedding at Brixton Town Hall.

Which honour did Dahl turn down in 1986, reportedly holding out for a knighthood?

He appears on Wikipedia's list of people who have declined a British honour.

Dahl's The Vicar of Nibbleswicke is about a clergyman with a fictitious form of which condition?

The vicar says words backwards; Dahl donated the rights to the Dyslexia Institute in London.

How many Edgar Awards did the Mystery Writers of America give Dahl for his macabre adult stories?

They came in 1954 for Someone Like You, 1959 for 'The Landlady' and 1980 for a TV episode based on 'Skin'.

Which Dahl story about a man betting for visitors' fingers did Tarantino adapt for Four Rooms?

The 1960 Alfred Hitchcock Presents version starred Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre.

Which Dahl story about a frozen joint of meat used as a murder weapon did Hitchcock personally direct for TV in 1958?

Six Dahl stories were used in the Hitchcock series and Hitchcock personally directed four of the episodes.

Which of his books did Dahl write in 1975 inside a traditional Romanichal vardo (caravan) in his garden?

The caravan became part of the plot: Danny and his father live in one, with Jeremy Irons as the father in the film.

Whose writing shed in Carmarthenshire did Dahl copy for his own writing hut?

On Desert Island Discs in 1979 he called Thomas 'the greatest poet of our time' and chose his reading of 'Fern Hill'.

Which Monty Python member recorded the audiobook of Esio Trot in 1994?

Richard Curtis later adapted the book for TV with Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench.

Roughly how many new words did Dahl invent, later collected in the Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary?

He built them on familiar sounds, so children can guess that 'lickswishy' is good to eat and 'rotsome' is not.

Which two 1960s films, both based on novels by the creator of James Bond, did Dahl write screenplays for?

He also began adapting his own Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but missed deadlines and David Seltzer finished it.

Why did Dahl disown the 1971 Gene Wilder film of his chocolate-factory novel?

He refused to allow any further film versions of the book in his lifetime.

Which novel did Dahl name as his favourite?

Its author Frederick Marryat was a former Royal Navy officer; Kipling, Dickens and Thackeray were other favourites.

The grandmother in The Witches was based directly on whom?

Sofie Dahl told her children traditional Norwegian tales of trolls, which resurface in The BFG and Fantastic Mr Fox.

In 1961 Dahl hosted a CBS science-fiction and horror anthology series called what?

It ran for 14 episodes as a lead-in to The Twilight Zone and was one of the last network dramas shot in New York.

Which ITV anthology series, running from 1979 to 1988, adapted Dahl's twist-ending short stories?

Dahl introduced every episode of the first two series on camera; when his stories ran out, other writers imitated his style.

Which of these items was Dahl NOT buried with in his 'sort of Viking funeral'?

He also went into the ground with some burgundy and chocolates; children still leave toys and flowers on the grave.

How old was Dahl when he died in Oxford in November 1990?

The cause was myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare blood cancer; The Times headlined his obituary 'Death silences Pied Piper of the macabre'.

Which company bought the Roald Dahl Story Company in 2021 for more than £500 million?

Its first releases were Matilda the Musical in 2022 and Wes Anderson's The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar in 2023.

Who plays Dahl himself in Wes Anderson's 2023 short film The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar?

Cumberbatch plays Henry Sugar; Anderson went on to adapt further Dahl stories in 2024.

In 2021, Forbes ranked Dahl first in which unusual category?

His books have sold more than 300 million copies in 63 languages.

Which Piccadilly chocolate shop, Dahl's favourite, makes the spiked truffles in My Uncle Oswald?

Uncle Oswald's love potion is smuggled into the truffles to seduce twentieth-century geniuses and royals.

Which Norwegian word, meaning 'place' or 'square', follows Dahl's name on a Cardiff Bay landmark?

The Oval Basin plaza was renamed in 2002 as a nod to the writer's Norwegian roots.

Which actor narrates the audiobook of Dahl's poetry collection Revolting Rhymes?

The poems parody nursery rhymes and fairy tales, swapping happily-ever-after for surprise endings.

Which BBC honour did Dahl's daughter Lucy accept for him in 2016, its first posthumous award?

The same centenary year, his letters home from boarding school were broadcast as Radio 4's Book of the Week.

On what date is Roald Dahl Day celebrated each year?

It is his birthday; the first blue plaque in his honour went up in Llandaff the day after what would have been his 93rd.

Which future archbishop did Dahl's memoir name as the Repton headmaster who viciously caned a friend?

Fisher later crowned Elizabeth II, though a biographer says the caning happened a year after he left the school.

In 1934 Dahl crossed the Atlantic on the RMS Nova Scotia to hike through which territory?

He went with the British Public Schools Exploring Society just before starting four years of training with Shell.

Of the seventeen men accepted for RAF flight training with Dahl in Kenya, how many survived the war?

Dahl had driven 600 miles from Dar es Salaam to Nairobi to join, and flew solo after just seven hours and 40 minutes in a Tiger Moth.

Which First Lady read Dahl's The Gremlins to her grandchildren after he sent her a copy?

The book drew on RAF folklore in which pilots blamed gremlins for everything that went wrong with their aircraft.

Which actor played Dahl in the 1981 film about his first wife's recovery from brain aneurysms?

Glenda Jackson played Patricia Neal in The Patricia Neal Story; Neal had to relearn how to walk and talk under Dahl's rehabilitation regime in 1965.

Dahl married his second wife Felicity in 1983 at a town hall in which part of London?

They had met in 1972 when she was a set designer on a coffee advert starring Dahl's then wife Patricia Neal, beginning an 11-year affair.

Which body asked Dahl to write a children's railway safety booklet, published posthumously in 1991?

Quentin Blake illustrated Roald Dahl's Guide to Railway Safety, one of the last things Dahl ever wrote.

Dahl's first blue plaque, unveiled in Llandaff in 2009, marks which site?

It commemorates the scene of the 'Great Mouse Plot' rather than the house where he was born.