Felicity Dahl, the widow of the beloved children’s book author Roald Dahl, rarely gives interviews. 18 years after Dahl’s death, she finds it difficult to speak about her husband without crying. But in an interview with the Sunday Guardian, she spoke candidly about
her husband's writing and personal life in order to publicize the inaugural Roald Dahl Funny Prize, which
will be awarded to a humorous children’s book author on Thursday.
Felicity (pictured), won now runs the Roald Dahl Foundation, attributes Dahl’s popularity among kids not just to
his humor, but to the fact that he treated children as his “equals,” never talking
down to them or forgetting his own childlike wonder. He would drink pink milk
for breakfast and constantly look for ways to surprise strangers with “treats,”
such as buying all the nurses on his hospital floor new clothes in the last
months of his life.
Dahl’s life was punctuated by tragedy. His sister and father
died of unrelated illnesses within a month of each other when he was young, and
his own daughter contracted a fatal illness many years later. But Felicity said
he kept positive in large part by keeping his child’s mind alive and well. “He
was always looking to help people and just make their day a little more
interesting,” Felicity said, “because most people's days were very dull.”
Felicity is certain that Dahl would have been sorely disheartened by the advent of Game Boys and Nintendo Wiis that occupy so much of young people's free time these days. “I think [computer] games are
absolutely appalling,” she said. “A child is never left on their own with
nothing, so that they have to create their world.”
On the upside, one million of Dahl’s books continue to be
sold each year.
Photo: Antonio Olmes/The Guardian
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