As far as big biographies go, this one was very good. I learned some new things and it was nice to read about an English author that I read to my students yearly. THe author doesn't make you feel like an idiot if you can't remember who is who in the book and Dahl's personality comes through the pages. If you have the stamina, its a good one.

anything you ever wanted to know or not know about dahl is here. interesting but long.

An incredibly detailed & thorough accounting of Dahl’s life.

Dahl was a man of many contradictions, and one who could be cold, dishonest and self-involved. This is a thorough and unflinching look at a man who wrote some of my favourite childhood novels. I doubt that I would've liked him if I'd known him, but I think I would have been fascinated by him regardless.

What a fascinating life he lead! The biographer had remarkable access to him and his family and it shows. Sometimes he had too much access. The book is a bit long and detailed and if it had been an even slightly less interesting subject, this would have been a big problem.
Luckily for the author, this was entirely not the case. Very little deals with his children story career, but boy, what else it does deal with.

A fairly intriguing biography about an interesting man (if not somewhat of an arrogant prick). The book could have done with being about 100 pages shorter (Some of the book was very boring and a slog to read). However, I appreciate the original letters that featured in the biography.

I read James and the Giant Peach seven times when I was in second grade.
I have since read (and re-read) every one of his books for children.
The the very first day I ever read the newspaper, when I was nine I found his obituary.
And I cried. For a long time.

Dahl had a huge impact on my formative reading years, I had every reason to be excited about this new biography.

Donald Sturrock had unparalleled access to Dahl's letters, private files, and family members for this biography and, boy oh boy, was it thorough. While I loved the detail and access to the life of Roald Dahl, it felt like Sturrock had SO much information, and SUCH a big job given to him, that he couldn't figure out what information could be left out. After the third or fourth description of nasty letters back and forth between Dahl and his publisher/editor/agent/fill in the blank, I was tired of hearing how difficult Dahl was to work with. Additionally, I found several typos and fragments of thought which went undeveloped.

Long story short: Being a huge Roald Dahl fan, I started reading this bio to get a better picture about an author who influenced me greatly. Even so, I think about 1/4 of this bio could have been cut and we still would have gotten a very fleshed out idea of who he was.

This year for my summer fun reading I decided to read a few of Roald Dahl's books that I somehow never got around to reading as a child. To cap it all off I decided to read more about Dahl as an author and came across this biography. Dahl lived a fascinating life--WWII pilot, WWII spy in the US, married an Oscar-winning actress, helped invent a shunt for pediatric head injuries, and of course wrote his collection of beloved children's books. The author of this bio has plenty of material to work with, but didn't seem to know how to edit. 600 pages was way too long!

Tremendous. Mr Sturrock's fondness for Roald comes through, but in a clear seeing way...no cover-ups, we see all sorts of disaggreeable features to Dahl's life, and yet it all adds up to a man who left an interesting, unique legacy.