There's a strange dossier of factoids about Roald Dahl at the back of the later editions of his children's books - the ones illustrated by Quentin Blake, after the two first began to collaborate in 1976.
The contents vary from book to book, but it generally includes a page of Weird and Wonderful Facts about Roald Dahl (including such gems as "He was a terrible speller, but he liked playing scrabble" and "His nickname at home was the Apple, because he was the apple of his mother's eye").
At the back of The Twits, we learn further that "Roald Dahl hated beards":
He never grew one and couldn't see why a man would want to hide his face behind a beard. He came to the conclusion that beards were grown to conceal something dreadful in a person's personality. He thought that beards were disgusting and dirty and that they always had food caught up in them. Mr Twit was one of the foulest and smelliest characters in all of Roald's books - and what did he have stuck to his face? A bristly, nailbrushy beard, of course.On one of the following pages, under the title Roald Dahl says, we're informed that:
I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I'll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else. If you're kind, that's it.There's clearly no need to extend it to people with beards, mind you, since they're already dead in the water so far as he's concerned.
There's more, much more: an exciting tour of Roald Dahl's Writing Hut (now preserved for posterity at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre); a copy of his Puffin Passport ("My most frightening moment: "In a Hurricane, 1941, RAF"; My funniest moment: "Being born" ..."); a somewhat hagiographic account of Roald Dahl's Family; a vocabulary of Gobblefunk (the language he invented for The BFG); A Day in the Life of Roald Dahl ("lunch ... a gin and tonic followed by Norwegian prawns with mayonnnaise and lettuce. At the end of every meal, Roald and his family had a chocolate bar chosen from a red plastic box"); a thrilling account of Roald Dahl's Adventures (which included once being forced to carry a heavy pack during a hike in Newfoundland, as well as the experience of having to beg for money for his fare back from France after making an impromptu daytrip across the channel at the age of 16); Roald Dahl Dates (very useful for the researcher); Roald Dahl's School Reports ("This boy is an indolent and illiterate member of the class"); Roald Dahl's Favourite Things (including a bottle of shavings from Roald's spine, as well as a ball of silver foil: "every day, during his time working in London, Roald squashed the wrappers of his Cadbury's Dairy Milk bar and gradually formed this ball; it weighs 310 grams"). Oh, and I mustn't forget: there's even a couple of pages entitled Meet Quentin Blake, where Dahl's favourite illustrator gets to share his experiences of working with the great man.
I suppose this kind of thing is harmless enough. Building up a cult of personality around your star author can pay big dividends - especially in the field of children's writing. Take all the fuss over J. K. Rowling's alleged preference for writing at a table in a café, for instance: even when it entails constructing a bespoke café along one wall of your stately home ...
The roalddahl.com website to which we're directed at the end of each of his books is, however, forced to start off now with a rather unfortunate disclaimer:
Roald Dahl's AntisemitismWhatever else he was, Roald Dahl was clearly a complex man - and unfortunately a long way from the kindly, even heroic, figure presented by these pages of data carefully curated for his legions of child readers.
During his lifetime Roald Dahl made a number of antisemitic comments. While we can appreciate and celebrate his creativity, we must also confront the harmful views he held.
The Roald Dahl Story Company (RDSC) apologises unreservedly for the lasting and understandable hurt that these antisemitic remarks have caused and the impact they have had. We condemn anti-Jewish racism and all forms of racism and prejudice.
Since our original apology in 2020 which was made in conjunction with the Roald Dahl family, RDSC has engaged in listening and learning from experts in tackling antisemitism, including the Antisemitism Policy Trust, which has supported us with advice and ongoing staff training to help us better understand antisemitism.
Here's Kingsley Amis's account of his first (and only) meeting with Roald Dahl:
I have only once met this renowned children's author. It was at a party in the 1970s given by Tom Stoppard at his house in Iver, Bucks.
... Dahl was invited and duly arrived, late, after everybody else was there, and by helicopter. ... At some stage, not by my choice, I found myself closeted alone with him.
First declaring himself a great fan of mine, he asked, ‘What are you working on at the moment, Kingsley?’
I started to make some reply, but he cut me short. ‘That sounds marvellous,' he said, 'but do you expect to make a lot of money out of it however well you do it?’
‘I don’t know about a lot,' I said. 'Enough, I hope. The sort of money I usually make.’
'So you've no financial problems.'
'I wouldn't say that either exactly, but I seem to be able to ...'
Dahl was shaking his head slowly. ‘I hate to think of a chap of your distinction having to worry about money at your time of life. Tell me, how old are you now?’ I told him ... 'Yes. You might be able to write better, I mean even better, if you were financially secure.'
... I must have mumbled something about only knowing how to write in the way I always had. Never mind - what had he got on the -
He was shaking his head again. 'What you want to do,' he said, 'is write a children’s book. That’s where the money is today, believe me.’ ...
'I wouldn't know how to set about it.'
'Do you know what my advance was on my last one?' When he found I did not, in fact had no idea, he told me. It certainly sounded like a large sum.
‘I couldn’t do it,' I told him again. 'I don't think I enjoyed children's books much when I was a child myself. I’ve got no feeling for that kind of thing.'
‘Never mind, the little bastards’d swallow it.’
Many times in these pages I have put in people's mouths approximations to what they said, what they might well have said, what they said at another time, and a few almost-outright inventions, but that last remark is verbatim.
'Well, I suppose you'd know,' I replied, 'but I can't help feeling they'd see through me. Children are supposed to be good at detecting insincerity and such, aren't they? Again, you're the man who understands about all that.'
... At length he roused himself.
'Well, it's up to you. Either you will or you won't. Write a children's book, I mean. But if you do decide to have a crack, let me give you one word of warning. Unless you put everything you've got into it, unless you write it from the heart, the kids'll have no use for it. They'll see you're having them on. And just let me tell you from experience that there's nothing kids hate more than that. They won't give you a second chance either. You'll have had it for good as far as they're concerned. Just you bear that in mind as a word of friendly advice. Now, if you'll excuse me, I rather think I'll go in search of another drink.'
And, with a stiff nod and an air of having asserted his integrity by rejecting some outrageous and repulsive suggestion, the man who put everything into the books he wrote for the kids left me to my thoughts. I felt rather as if I had been looking at one of those pictures by Escher in which the eye is led up a flight of stairs only to find itself at the same level as it started at.
I watched the television news that night, but there was no report of a famous children's author being killed in a helicopter crash."
- Kingsley Amis, "Roald Dahl." Memoirs (1991): 305-7.
No doubt this much-quoted anecdote doesn't give the whole truth about Roald Dahl. Amis was, after all, a novelist, and no stranger to embellishing a story. It does, though, give some sense of how Dahl's massive egotism could strike a complete stranger.
Further information can be gleaned from Craig Brown's 2022 Daily Mail article "Why Roald Dahl was a spiteful BFG (big fibbing giant) (the title may give you some clue to the tenor of the piece):
‘He was a plagiarist, a racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic and overbearingly rude,’ noted one reviewer last Sunday of a new biography of Dahl.
To this list, one might also add ‘malicious liar’. When Dahl came to write his autobiography, Boy, he chose to turn on his old headmaster, Geoffrey Fisher — later to become the Archbishop of Canterbury — accusing him of delivering ‘the most vicious beatings to the boys under his care’. He described one beating in detail. ‘The victim was told to wash away the blood before pulling up his trousers.’
But Dahl knew full well that he was pointing the finger at the wrong man. At the time those beatings had taken place, someone else was headmaster.
In fact, Dahl had always enjoyed a good relationship with Geoffrey Fisher, describing him as ‘frightfully nice’ in a letter home, and continuing to visit him as an adult.
As a successful author, Dahl had even sent Fisher a copy of one of his books, signing it: ‘With gratitude and affection.’ Moreover, when Dahl’s seven-year-old daughter Olivia died suddenly, it was to Fisher he had turned for consolation. Soon after Fisher’s death, he praised him in a speech as ‘thoroughly good’.
Why did Roald Dahl make these false accusations against someone he knew was innocent? The only possible explanation is that Dahl thought it would make a better, more commercial, story to pretend that his sadistic headmaster was the same man who had later been appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.
For all his talent and charisma, there was, it must be said, something a little creepy about Roald Dahl. A friend of mine, who was once a regular visitor to his house, was surprised at how often he would bump into Gary Glitter there.
During Gary Glitter’s 1992 appearance on This Is Your Life, Dahl’s daughter Tessa was a guest. ‘Gary actually came to live in my house when he was between jobs ...’ she said.
‘When I was absolutely broke!’ laughed Glitter.
'My sister Lucy turned it into quite a successful venture because she used to pack the train full of her adolescent school friends in school uniform and then skive school ...’
At this point, you can see Gary Glitter putting his forefinger to his lips and miming: ‘Shhh!’
Who knows? If ever a TV company wishes to revive Dahl’s Tales Of The Unexpected, this might make the perfect episode.
Tales of the Unexpected was, in fact, where I first made acquaintance with Roald Dahl's work. I enjoyed a lot of the stories, which seemed cleverly constructed - if a little exaggeratedly cruel and dark. But if (like me) you have an unrepentant taste for tales of terror and the macabre, that's more of a recommendation than anything else.
Nor did there seem anything unusual about his choosing to front each episode himself. It was Alfred Hitchcock who began that trend - and by the mid-70s it had become so common that even poor old P. G. Wodehouse was persuaded to film some introductions to Wodehouse Playhouse (1974-78) shortly before his death.
But I always felt a certain curiosity about those "other" books of Dahl's - the ones I was clearly far too old and grizzled to enjoy - until, that is, they started to appear as films.
I'd seen Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, of course. Who hasn't? The one which really surprised me, though, was the original, 1990 version of The Witches, starring Anjelica Huston:
The real star turn there, I'd have to say, came from veteran Swedish actress Mai Zetterling, who played the grandmother. But Nic Roeg did a brilliant job of reproducing the cartoony exuberance of the plot, and doing justice to its darker twists and turns.
I missed Jeremy Irons in Danny, the Champion of the World (1989), and I can't claim to have been too impressed by Matilda (1996), but I did enjoy Johhny Depp's take on Willy Wonka in the 2005 remake:
Now that I've finally cranked around to read the bulk of Dahl's opus for children, I can see what Wes Anderson was getting at in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), but I fear that - for me, at least - the charm of the original was largely submerged by Anderson's self-indulgent whimsy.
The BFG, by contrast, seems a little undercooked. It's pretty faithful to the book, though, which I guess is a plus.
But what strikes me most about these films as a group is how extraordinarily fortunate Dahl was in his directors: talk about A-listers only! Nicolas Roeg, Tim Burton. Wes Anderson, Steven Spielberg, and now Robert Zemeckis in the recent remake of The Witches!
The effort to portray Dahl himself in a favourable light on screen has met with rather less success. To Olivia, which tries to reproduce something of the atmosphere of the C. S. Lewis bio-pic Shadowlands, was found unconvincing by the majority of critics. Accused of being "burdened with clichés and guilty of glossing over troublesome aspects of its fact-based story, To Olivia," they concluded, "can't quite capture the grief it seeks to dramatize."
Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent clarified her own verdict as follows:
It struggles to reconcile the palpable image of a sensitive family man laid low by depression with the more complicated reality that ran alongside it – that of a sometimes-tyrant with a great capacity for manipulation.The situation portrayed in the film is also complicated by the fact that "In 1983, following Dahl's 11-year affair with Felicity D'Abreu, a set designer he met when she worked with [his wife, Oscar-winning actress Patricia Neal] on a Maxim Coffee advertisement, Neal's marriage ended in divorce." That was, admittedly, after Dahl had nursed her through a debilitating stroke, so you'd have to be a Solomon to try and apportion blame in the midst of such a concatenation of tragedies.
Another attempt to rehabilitate Dahl's image was made in Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse, the would-be whimsical account of an (allegedly) real meeting between the six-year-old Roald and his idol Beatrix Potter.
Dawn French plays the latter as so capricious and erratic a domestic tyrant that the young Roald comes off as almost normal by comparison. Despite a few laudatory reviews by sentimental journalists, it can hardly be said to have satisfied fans of either writer.
But enough of all that. What of the books themselves?
It's probably too late for me to develop a genuine taste for them. I would have had to have been brought up on them, as so many children - it would appear - continue to be.
But they are, nevertheless, very readable, even for a querulous old curmudgeon such as myself. I haven't read them all, but I've read most of them - in a very short period of time, too. I'd rate them as follows, purely on grounds of personal predilection:
- Matilda (1988)
- The Magic Finger (1966)
- Fantastic Mr Fox (1970)
- The Witches (1983)
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
- The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me (1985)
- George's Marvellous Medicine (1981)
- James and the Giant Peach (1961)
- The BFG (1982)
- Esio Trot (1990)
- The Twits (1980)
- Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972)
- Danny, the Champion of the World (1975)
I guess I have to put this one first, as its heroine, a bookish child, is such a contrast to the obnoxious brat of the film adaptation. What a pleasant surprise!
An elegant fable, with an excellent moral about the cruelty of hunting.
Again - so much better than the film! A fine, Kenneth Grahame-like fantasy about furry animals in their underground city.
A great piece of storytelling: strikingly original in its treatment of the age-old witch theme. Perhaps the only one of his stories that works as well as a film as it does as a book.
A polished and interesting piece of children's fiction - so familiar now from its movie incarnations that it's hard to read it without seeing them in your mind's eye.
Charming - if slight. Ideal for its intended audience of younger children, I'd say.
Very inventive, if a little over-dependent on ideas borrowed from H. G. Wells' The Food of the Gods (1904).
Probably the strangest of all of his books. There's little explanation of the setting and circumstances, but an undeniable magic in the basic concept.
I have to give it points for originality and narrative drive, though I fear it's all sounds a bit contrived to me. Certainly much better than the Spielberg-ised version.
Slight, but fun. I do find the basic concept rather cruel in its callous disregard for the rights of tortoises to basic comfort and dignity, but I suppose it's all in fun.
A nasty book about nasty people. The ethical level of some of his plots is a bit too carnivalesque for me: pratfalls and slaps in the face in front of a roaring crowd.
This one is just plain silly. He'd have been better off leaving the original book alone.
Danny's father seems a most reprehensible individual, and the basic poaching plot is quite abhorrent. It's hard to believe that the author of The Magic Finger could also have come up with this.
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I haven't yet read any of the following, I'm afraid (though I'd certainly be curious to do so):
- The Gremlins. New York: Random House, 1943.
- Sometime Never: A Fable for Supermen. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948.
- The Enormous Crocodile. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978.
- My Uncle Oswald. London: Michael Joseph, 1979.
- The Vicar of Nibbleswicke. London: Century, 1991)
- The Minpins. London: Jonathan Cape, 1991.
It seems unlikely that any of them would be likely to alter significantly my overall opinions about Dahl, however.
All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by the books. There are some excellent plots there, and while the characterisation consists almost entirely of sorting the personnel of each story into goodies and baddies, that's scarcely unusual in children's fiction.
Donald Sturrock, in his monumental (authorised) biography of Dahl, does his best to put a positive spin on every detail of his life. Whether or not the result is entirely convincing must depend on each reader to decide.
Perhaps the most significant facts about Roald Dahl are that he can still provoke headlines more than three decades after his death, and that the appeal of his work shows no signs of abating. What writer would refuse such a legacy?
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Novels:
- The Gremlins (1943)
- Sometime Never: A Fable for Supermen (1948)
- James and the Giant Peach (1961)
- James and the Giant Peach. 1961. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1995. A Puffin Book. London: Penguin, 2013.
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Illustrated by Faith Jaques. 1964. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 1964. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1995. A Puffin Book. London: Penguin, 2013.
- The Magic Finger (1966)
- The Magic Finger. 1966. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1995. A Puffin Book. London: Penguin, 2013.
- Fantastic Mr Fox (1970)
- Fantastic Mr Fox. Illustrated by Jill Bennett. 1970. A Young Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
- Fantastic Mr Fox. 1970. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1996. A Puffin Book. London: Penguin, 2013.
- Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972)
- Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Illustrated by Faith Jaques. 1973. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
- Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. 1973. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1995. A Puffin Book. London: Penguin, 2013.
- Danny, the Champion of the World (1975)
- Danny The Champion of the World. Illustrated by Jill Bennett. 1975. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
- Danny The Champion of the World. 1975. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1994. A Puffin Book. London: Penguin, 1984.
- The Enormous Crocodile (1978)
- My Uncle Oswald (1979)
- The Twits (1980)
- The Twits. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1980. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2001.
- George's Marvellous Medicine (1981)
- George's Marvellous Medicine. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1981. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2001.
- George's Marvellous Medicine. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1981. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2013.
- The BFG (1982)
- The BFG. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1982. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2013.
- The Witches (1983)
- The Witches. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1983. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2013.
- The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me (1985)
- The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1985. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2013.
- Matilda (1988)
- Matilda. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1988. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2013.
- Esio Trot (1990)
- Esio Trot. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1990. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2013.
- The Vicar of Nibbleswicke (1991)
- The Minpins (1991)
- Over to You: Ten Stories of Flyers and Flying (1946) [OTY]
- An African Story
- Only This
- Katina
- Beware of the Dog
- They Shall Not Grow Old
- Someone Like You
- Death of an Old Old Man
- Madame Rosette
- A Piece of Cake
- Yesterday Was Beautiful
- Included in: The Collected Short Stories: An Omnibus Volume. London: BCA, 1991.
- Someone Like You (1953) [SLY]
- Taste
- Lamb to the Slaughter
- Man from the South
- The Soldier
- My Lady Love, My Dove
- Dip in the Pool
- Galloping Foxley
- Skin
- Poison
- The Wish
- Neck
- The Sound Machine
- Nunc Dimittis
- The Great Automatic Grammatizator
- Claude's Dog
- The Ratcatcher
- Rummins
- Mr. Feasey
- Mr. Hoddy
- Included in: The Collected Short Stories: An Omnibus Volume. London: BCA, 1991.
- Kiss Kiss (1960) [KK]
- The Landlady
- William and Mary
- The Way Up to Heaven
- Parson's Pleasure
- Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat
- Royal Jelly
- Georgy Porgy
- Genesis and Catastrophe: A True Story
- Edward the Conqueror
- Pig
- The Champion of the World
- Included in: The Collected Short Stories: An Omnibus Volume. London: BCA, 1991.
- Twenty-Nine Kisses from Roald Dahl ["Someone Like You", 1953 & "Kiss Kiss", 1960] (1969)
- Switch Bitch (1974) [SB]
- The Visitor
- The Great Switcheroo
- The Last Act
- Bitch
- Included in: The Collected Short Stories: An Omnibus Volume. London: BCA, 1991.
- The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (1977) [HS]
- The Boy Who Talked with Animals
- The Hitch-Hiker
- The Mildenhall Treasure
- The Swan
- The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
- Lucky Break
- A Piece of Cake
- The Best of Roald Dahl: Stories from Over to You, Someone Like You, Kiss Kiss, Switch Bitch (1978) [Best]
- Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
- More Tales of the Unexpected (1980) [MTU]
- Genesis and Catastrophe
- Georgy Porgy
- Mr. Botibol
- Poison
- The Butler
- The Hitch-Hiker
- The Sound Machine
- The Umbrella Man
- Vengeance is Mine Inc.
- A Roald Dahl Selection: Nine Short Stories (1980)
- Two Fables (1986)
- The Roald Dahl Omnibus (1986)
- Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life: The Country Stories of Roald Dahl (1989) [SM]
- The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl (1991)
- An African Story [OTY]
- Only This [OTY]
- Katina [OTY]
- Beware of the Dog [OTY]
- They Shall Not Grow Old [OTY]
- Someone Like You [OTY]
- Death of an Old Old Man [OTY]
- Madame Rosette [OTY]
- A Piece of Cake [OTY]
- Yesterday was Beautiful [OTY]
- Taste [SLY]
- Lamb to the Slaughter [SLY]
- Man From the South [SLY]
- The Soldier [SLY]
- My Lady Love, My Dove [SLY]
- Dip in the Pool [SLY]
- Galloping Foxley [SLY]
- Skin [SLY]
- Poison [SLY]
- The Wish [SLY]
- Neck [SLY]
- The Sound Machine [SLY]
- Nunc Dimittis [SLY]
- The Great Automatic Grammatizator [SLY]
- The Ratcatcher [SLY]
- Rummins [SLY]
- Mr. Feasey [SLY]
- Mr. Hoddy [SLY]
- The Landlady [KK]
- William and Mary [KK]
- The Way Up to Heaven [KK]
- Parson’s Pleasure [KK]
- Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat [KK]
- Royal Jelly [KK]
- Georgy Porgy [KK]
- Genesis and Catastrophe [KK]
- Edward the Conqueror [KK]
- Pig [KK]
- The Champion of the World [KK]
- The Visitor [SB]
- The Great Switcheroo [SB]
- The Last Act [SB]
- Bitch [SB]
- The Hitchhiker [HS]
- The Butler [MTU]
- The Umbrella Man [MTU]
- Vengeance is Mine, Inc. [MTU]
- Mr. Botibol [MTU]
- The Bookseller [Best]
- The Surgeon [Skin]
- Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life [SM]
- The Collected Short Stories: An Omnibus Volume Containing: Kiss, Kiss, Over To You, Switch Bitch, Someone Like You and eight further tales of the unexpected. 1960, 1946, 1974, 1954. London: BCA, 1991.
- The Roald Dahl Treasury (1997)
- The great automatic grammatizator and other stories (2001)
- Skin and Other Stories (2002) [Skin]
- The Complete Short Stories: Volume One (1944–1953) (2013)
- Katina (1944)
- Only This (1944)
- Beware of the Dog (1944)
- An African Story (1946)
- Yesterday was Beautiful (1946)
- A Piece of Cake (1942)
- They Shall Not Grow Old (1945)
- Madame Rosette (1945)
- Death of an Old Old Man (1945)
- Someone Like You (1945)
- The Mildenhall Treasure (1947)
- Man From the South (1948)
- The Sound Machine (1949)
- Poison (1950)
- Taste (1951)
- Dip in the Pool (1952)
- Skin (1952)
- My Lady Love, My Dove (1952)
- Lamb to the Slaughter (1953)
- Nunc Dimittis (1953)
- Edward the Conqueror (1953)
- Galloping Foxley (1953)
- Neck (1953)
- The Wish (1953)
- The Soldier (1953)
- The Great Automatic Grammatizator (1953)
- The Ratcatcher (1953)
- Rummins (1953)
- Mr. Hoddy (1953)
- Mr. Feasey (1953)
- The Complete Short Stories: Volume Two (1954–1988) (2013)
- The Way Up to Heaven (1954)
- Parson’s Pleasure (1958)
- The Champion of the World (1959)
- The Landlady (1959)
- Genesis and Catastrophe (1959)
- Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat (1959)
- Pig (1960)
- Royal Jelly (1960)
- William and Mary (1960)
- Georgy Porgy (1960)
- The Visitor (1965)
- The Last Act (1966)
- The Great Switcheroo (1974)
- The Butler (1974)
- Bitch (1974)
- Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life (1974)
- The Hitchhiker (1977)
- The Swan (1977)
- The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (1977)
- The Boy Who Talked with Animals (1977)
- Lucky Break (1977)
- The Umbrella Man (1980)
- Vengeance is Mine, Inc. (1980)
- Mr. Botibol (1980)
- The Princess and the Poacher (1986)
- Princess Mammalia (1986)
- The Bookseller (1987)
- The Surgeon (1988)
- The Honeys [Stage] (1955)
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Lamb to the Slaughter" [TV] (1958)
- Way Out: "William and Mary" [TV] (1961)
- [with Jack Bloom] You Only Live Twice [Film] (1967)
- [with Ken Hughes] Chitty Chitty Bang Bang [Film] (1968)
- Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory [Film] (1971)
- The Night Digger [Film] (1971) – Film script )
- The BFG: Plays for Children [Stage] (1976)
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: A Play [Stage] (1976)
- James and the Giant Peach: A Play [Stage] (1982)
- Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator: A Play [Stage] (1984)
- Fantastic Mr Fox: A Play [Stage] (1987)
- Revolting Rhymes (1982)
- Dirty Beasts (1983)
- Rhyme Stew (1989)
- Songs and Verse (2005)
- Vile Verses (2005)
- Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories (1983)
- Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984)
- Boy: Tales of Childhood. 1984. Illustrations by Quentin Blake. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2013.
- Going Solo (1986)
- Going Solo. 1986. Cover Illustrations by Quentin Blake. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2013.
- Measles, a Dangerous Illness (1988)
- [with Felicity Dahl] Memories with Food at Gipsy House [aka "Roald Dahl's Cookbook", 1996] (1991)
- Roald Dahl's Guide to Railway Safety (1991)
- The Dahl Diary 1992 (1991)
- My Year (1993)
- The Roald Dahl Diary 1997 (1996)
- The Mildenhall Treasure (1999)
- Sturrock, Donald. Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl. Harper Press. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.
Short Story Collections:
Scripts:
Poetry:
Edited:
Non-fiction:
Secondary:
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