In 1983, Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal were divorced after thirty years of marriage, and later that same year he married Felicity Crosland. Despite the fact that they were of, respectively, Norwegian and Portugese parentage (her maiden name was ‘d’Abreau’), both had coincidentally been born in the Welsh town of Llandaff. They collaborated on a coffee-table-style cookery book, Memories with Food at Gipsy House (1991), which includes a family tree from which both their former spouses are omitted!

The same year that Someone Like You was published, Dahl married film actress Patricia Neal, who won an Academy Award for her role in Hud in 1961. The marriage lasted three decades and resulted in five children, one of whom tragically died in 1962. I first encountered the work of Roald Dahl in third grade, by playing a character in a classroom adaptation of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Not long after that, I read “James and the Giant Peach.” I was not a child who particularly cared for children’s literature, but even as an eight- or nine-year-old I was captivated by the way Dahl’s fantasias took on their own logic, their own momentum, and were driven as much by the flow of language as by the absurdities of plot. Put another way, reading Dahl was my introduction to the importance of the teller, the idea that a successful story was less a matter of narrative than of voice—or not less, exactly, for Dahl’s writing is nothing if not plotted. But he made me aware that the narrator, whether third person or first, is not a neutral figure but an active, even directive, force. (This discovery may have had something to do with the role I played in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”: I was the narrator.) Overall the novel reads like a hastily written first draft, and is in dire need of editing. It was a complete flop on both sides of the Atlantic, and neither Scribner nor Collins showed any further interest in Dahl’ s stories. The book has subsequently remained out of print everywhere — apart from Holland, where it was reissued in 1982.In November 1939, Dahl joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) as an aircraftman with service number 774022. [56] After a 600-mile (970km) car journey from Dar es Salaam to Nairobi, he was accepted for flight training with sixteen other men, of whom only three survived the war. With seven hours and 40 minutes experience in a De Havilland Tiger Moth, he flew solo; [57] Dahl enjoyed watching the wildlife of Kenya during his flights. He continued to advanced flying training in Iraq, at RAF Habbaniya, 50 miles (80km) west of Baghdad. Following six months' training on Hawker Harts, Dahl was commissioned as a pilot officer on 24 August 1940, and was judged ready to join a squadron and face the enemy. [56] [58] Dahl was flying a Gloster Gladiator when he crash landed in Libya Despite having lived a Dahl-free existence until recently, I still read a lot of kids’ books, and perhaps this is me wearing my when-I-were-a-lass hat, but modern children’s books have grown overly keen on forcing their protagonists to grow up. Parents are stripped away (often in traumatic circumstances) and the fates of entire worlds are placed on the child hero’s shoulders. Dahl, however, allows his children to be children. Sophie, the heroine of The BFG, is an orphan and survivor of scary adventures, but she does it all under the protection of the BFG. Knowing that Sophie herself is never in any real danger gives Dahl a safety net to take the reader’s imaginations to some very dark places. How many of today’s kids’ books dwell in such cheerily gory detail on children getting chewed up by giants? A boy happens upon a witch convention, where the witches are planning to get rid of every last child in England. The boy and his grandmother must battle the witches to save the children. 'Matilda' (1988)

Chantal Sophia "Tessa" (born 1957), who became an author, and mother of author, cookbook writer and former model Sophie Dahl (after whom Sophie in The BFG is named); [83]

Roald Dahl is also well-regarded as a writer of macabre short stories for adults. Originally published in magazines including The New Yorker and Playboy, they’re best known from collections like Kiss Kiss and Someone Like You. Many were adapted for the classic TV series Tales of the Unexpected. They’re available in eight beautifully designed themed collections. Walker, Richard (April 2002). "Roald Dahl: A Collector's Guide to his First Editions". The Book and Magazine Collector. No.217.