Making up nonsensical words was part of what Roald Dahl did best, in fact, he created 238 new words for The BFG, written in 1982. [1]
Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter pilot of Norwegian descent. He has been called “one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century”.
Dahl was born in Llandaff, Wales, on 13th September 1916 to Norwegian parents, Harald and Sofie Magdalene Dahl. He was named after Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian who had been the first man to reach the South Pole four years earlier. When Dahl was 3 years old, his older sister died from appendicitis, followed by the death of his father several weeks later.
He was educated within the English boarding school system where he excelled at sports, but was never seen as a particularly talented writer, with one of his school reports reading “I have never met anybody who so persistently writes words meaning the exact opposite of what is intended.” Dahl stated that many of the inspirations for his later works would come from his boarding school days.
Serving in the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Second World War, Dahl became a fighter pilot and an intelligence officer, rising to the rank of acting wing commander.
After the war, he rose to prominence as a writer in the 1940s producing tales for both children and adults. His first book for children, The Gremlins, was written in 1943 and he went on to write several of the most popular children’s stories of the 20th century, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, and James and the Giant Peach. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide and several have been made into motion pictures.
Dahl married American actress Patricia Neal in 1953 and they had five children. After 30 years they divorced, and he married for the second time in 1983.
Dahl’s short stories are known for their unexpected endings, and his children’s books for their unsentimental, often darkly comic mood, featuring villainous adult enemies of the child characters. His books champion the kind-hearted and feature underlying warm sentiment. He has won numerous awards for his contribution to literature and in 2008, The Times placed Dahl 16th on its list of “The 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945”. He died in November 1990, aged 74.