Exorcising Dahl's demons
Roald Dahl: A Biography by Jeremy Treglown Faber $298 SPY, womaniser, gambler, racist, tyrant, bully, misogynist, plagiarist, drug addict, war hero, liar, athlete and egotist: these are not epithets one would normally associate with the author of children's books but they have all at one stage or another, been levelled at Roald Dahl.
Far from being a contented, woolly jumper-wearing, be-slippered, pipe-smoking figure happily reciting stories to enraptured children - as popular myth would have him - the 1.9-metre giant was a complex, restless figure perpetually at war with himself andothers.
Not only did he seek to live life to the full, when it failed to live up to his critical expectations, he sought to live it further through his fiction. And when that failed, there was always oblivion, courtesy of whisky or the painkillers prescribed himfor injuries sustained in a wartime accident.
Dahl, who died four years ago aged 74, is renowned as a latter-day Hans Christian Andersen, although it was not until his 40s, after a largely unsuccessful stint as a writer of adult fiction, that he reluctantly turned to the children's writing which earned him millions.
His work is now a common point of reference all over the world, popular not only throughout Europe and the United States, where he lived, but also in Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, Brazil and - despite what is politely called his anti-Zionism - Israel. (Dahl once said that Hitler had not picked on the Jews for no reason.) In Britain between 1980 and 1990, over 11 million of his children's books were sold in paperback form - considerably more than the total number of children born there in the same period. The initial Chinese print-run for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,perhaps his most famous tale, was two million copies.
Among his other well-known works were James and the Giant Peach, The Twits, Revolting Rhymes, The BFG, and The Witches. Most betray a vengeful cynicism which many critics applaud as social satire. His adult work, renowned for the surprising twists in thetail, possesses a similar quality.