Love from Boy
Roald Dahl's Letters to his Mother
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Love from Boy
Narrated by:
Andrew Wincott, Thomas Judd
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Andrew Wincott
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Thomas Judd
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By:
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Donald Sturrock
About this listen
I am having a lovely time here. We play football every day here. The beds have no springs . . .'
So begins the first letter that a nine-year-old Roald Dahl penned to his mother, Sofie Magdalene, under the watchful eye of his boarding-school headmaster. For most of his life, Roald Dahl would continue to write weekly letters to his mother, chronicling his adventures, frustrations and opinions, from the delights of childhood to the excitements of flying as a World War II fighter pilot and the thrill of meeting top politicians and movie stars during his time as a diplomat and spy in Washington. And, unbeknown to Roald, his mother lovingly kept every single one of them.
Sofie was, in many ways, Roald's first reader. It was she who encouraged him to tell stories and nourished his desire to fabricate, exaggerate and entertain. Reading these letters, you can see Roald practicing his craft, developing the dark sense of humour and fantastical imagination that would later produce such timeless tales as The BFG, Matilda, Fantastic Mr Fox and The Witches.
The letters in Love from Boy are littered with jokes and madcap observations; sometimes serious, sometimes tender, and often outrageous. To eavesdrop on a son's letters to his mother is to witness Roald Dahl turning from a boy to a man, and finally becoming a writer.
Praise for Storyteller
'A truly magnificent biography . . . a masterly account' A N Wilson
'Superb . . . hugely readable' Sunday Telegraph
(P)2016 John Murray Press
Letters by Roald Dahl © 2016 Roald Dahl Nominee Ltd. Introduction, essays, selection and compilation copyright © 2016 Donald Sturrock.©2016 Donald Sturrock
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Critic reviews
A touching collection that throws new light on one of the greatest of all children's book writers . . . The sense of humour, often dark and subversive, that would come to delight the readers of Matilda, Fantastic Mr Fox and The Witches, dances through the pages of this wonderful book . . . Each chronological subdivision of this lovely book is illustrated with drawings, maps and photographs and prefaced by Donald Sturrock's exemplary editorial explanations. The letters become a delightfully original form of biography, as their author changes from child into student, into trainee fighter pilot in Iraq and Egypt, wartime daredevil in Greece and Palestine, diplomat in Washington, and unlikely British spy (Juliet Nicolson)
Love From Boy, in all its cunning unreliability, becomes more fascinating the more you think about it. It is a work of showmanship, written for someone to whom the author would always be a child. As the backdrop to one of the world's greatest children's writers, it's so wonderfully complicated you'd have thought even Dahl couldn't have made it up. Except that he did
Sturrock's carefully chosen letters, complemented by a judicious selection of biographical and photographic material, testify to a bond between mother and son that is unbreakable, even in the face of boarding school, war and sexual jokes about Hitler
Sturrock is right to claim that the letters to his mother show, in embryo, essential features of Dahl's art, such as his fantastical imagination and his sadistic sense of humour
[An] entertaining and eye-opening collection . . . it is his younger self that is captured here - jaunty and anarchic, yet a recognisable forerunner of that more subtly anarchic, stooping, cardiganed figure who was the world-famous author, gazing out on the world from his garden shed with watery, mischievous eyes
[An] enjoyable selection from Dahl's devoted four-decade correspondence with his mother . . . an intriguing mixture of absolute intimacy, a total disregard for priggishness or decorum, fierce candour, and, in certain respects, a complete absence of it
Sturrock's commentary on the letters is meticulous, thoughtful and kind. Anyone looking for revelations, kiss and tell or psychoanalytic exposure will be disappointed. It's a fascinating view of an extraordinary mid-20th century, upper-middle-class British boy and man talking to his extraordinary Norwegian mother (Michael Rosen)
It offers an insight not only to Dahl's close relationship with his mother but also a glimpse into how he became one of the greatest children's authors of the 20th century
A fascinating collection
Lovingly edited and deftly commented upon by his biographer Donald Sturrock
most unusual way, not only a great storyteller
but a most interesting letter writer beautifully
read
fascinating
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Didn't want this to end.
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Amazing
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I really enjoyed it. Performances from the narrators were wonderful and suited the book impeccably.
From insights on author, to society and war
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Above all, these letters are entertaining: full of jokes, pranks, sharp observations, exuberance and energy. His relationship with Sofie Magdalene as well as deeply loving was clearly robust - Dahl's language is frequently extremely coarse and bawdy, but then his mother had given her reckless, rule-breaking son a motor cycle at the age of 16 and sent his favourite pipes from home for him to smoke at school at Repton.
Prep school was full of tales of escapades - fishing for crayfish to eat and one to put in a boy's bed; the new matron Miss Turner not lasting after she kissed a boy in the wash room. There was constant illness amongst the boys from nose-bleeds to pneumonia, and in one letter Dahl mentions almost in passing that 'poor little Ford died yesterday', following complications from measles, just as Dahl's adored seven year-old daughter would do many years later. Life at Repton was brightened by a fire which tore through the building;covering the study with pea soup when the pan they were heating up exploded;live rounds being fired by mistake during a school exercise - and Dahl's friend being expelled for 'immorality' with a younger boy.
The academic route was not for Dahl and he joined what would become the Royal Dutch Shell Company in Dar es Salaam where most of their time was spent getting 'whistled' with inordinate amounts of alcohol, suffering the heat and green mildew with all its attendant ailments. When War began he joined the airforce in Nairobi and it was from there he crashed in the desert and suffered the back injury which dogged him forthe rest of his life. But his letters remained jaunty throughout, urging his mother to move to the safety of Wales and making a story out of the dark days that followed his near-death experience.
It is only in the later letters after the death of his little daughter, the terrible injuries suffered by his baby son in a road accident, and the devastating stroke of his young wife that there are just glimpses of Dahl's real feelings. Everything is seen through the prism of Dahl's persona which befitted his 6'5" stature: enormous appetite for life in all its peculiarities with a correspondingly huge desire to entertain. These letters are unique - the mothers of today's up and coming writers won't be able to produce a similar crop from emails and messaging. We're lucky to share in these.
Dearest Mama
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