Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl

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National Geographic Books, Sep 13, 2011 - Biography & Autobiography - 704 pages
Anyone who ever wished as a child to meet Willy Wonka or hang out with the BFG will be fascinated to learn in this engrossing, authorized biography of the late Roald Dahl that his own life was far, far more strange than even his fiction.

Twenty years after his death, Roald Dahl's bestselling stories continue to inspire and entertain children around the globe. But the man behind the stories remains an enigma. Despite his astonishing life as a Norwegian growing up in Wales, whose father died when he was just five, and as an ace fighter pilot, British intelligence agent, and husband for a while to one of Hollywood's top stars, Dahl nonetheless persistently embroidered the truth about himself, rewrote history, ignored reality, and defended his deep vulnerabilities with outlandish and wilfully provocative remarks. Facts bored him.

As his authorized biographer, Donald Sturrock, a wonderful writer and careful researcher, has drawn on Dahl's many previously unexamined files and a vast body of unpublished letters for this nuanced and engrossing narrative of the storyteller's long, adventurous life.

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About the author (2011)

DONALD STURROCK is an award-winning TV film producer and a librettist who has been the artistic director of the Roald Dahl Foundation since 1992. He grew up in England and South America, attended Oxford University, and joined BBC Television's Music and Arts Department in 1983. In 1995 Sturrock directed an acclaimed BBC television version of his own adaptation of Roald Dahl's Little Red Riding Hood with Danny DeVito, Ian Holm, and Julie Walters. In 1998, at the Los Angeles Opera, Sturrock also directed the world premiere of Fantastic Mr. Fox, an opera based on Dahl's book, adapted by Sturrock, and with designs by Gerald Scarfe. His children's opera Keepers of the Night premiered in Los Angeles in 2007. Storyteller is his first book.

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