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Roald Dahl and the Back Story to “The BFG”
The secret autobiography of a writer and his heartbreak at the death of his seven-year-old daughter from measles.
Steven Spielberg’s new movie The BFG (Disney Studios) is a largely faithful version of Roald Dahl’s popular children’s book with the same title. The one significant departure from the book is downplayed in the film: In the novel, the last sentences make clear that the BFG (the Big Friendly Giant) has become a writer and is the author of the very book you are holding in your hands. Indeed, Dahl’s book about a writer is a kind of secret autobiography. Knowing how that is so might add to your appreciation of Spielberg’s terrific film.
Roald Dahl (1916–1990) was a World War II fighter ace who became a writer for adults and then an immensely popular writer for children. Among his well known books for kids are James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, and The Twits. With more than 200 million books in print, Dahl is ranked among the best selling authors of the world; and, far and away, he is the best selling children’s writer in the U.K. I remember going to a bookstore there and looking at two sections of children’s offerings: one was devoted to Dahl’s works and another to everyone else (from Beatrix Potter to Harry Potter).
Dahl was married for thirty years to the actress Patricia Neal and had five children. The BFG is dedicated to his daughter Olivia who was seven years old when she died of measles encephalitis, a rare side effect of measles. Dahl was crushed and, according to family members, rendered “limp with despair” for the rest of his life. Olivia died in 1962. The BFG was published in 1982.
Olivia’s death provoked the Writer in Dahl, and he penned pamphlets widely distributed by pro-vaccine organizations. His vehement conclusion was “Parents who now refuse to have their children immunized are putting the lives of those children at risk.” School children at risk, a handful of them plucked nightly from their beds and meeting a grisly end–you might say the stage…
