Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl: Roald Dahl Book

“It’s a measure of the greatness of this biography that Sturrock is able to get behind these fantasies and exaggerations without losing respect or sympathy for Dahlâ?¦.There are big gaps between Dahl’s masterpiecesâ?¦.a real joy of this book is that they show just how much work went into those slim volumes, and how much depended on a series of brilliant editors” The Times by Frank Cottrell Boyce

“This is his first biography and it is hard to see how he could have done it better. At all times he is able to view Dahl from within and without - as he saw himself and as others saw him – and to explain the divide... Dahl’s life is a biographer’s dreamâ?¦full of drama, both comical and romantic and, sometimes, desperately tragicâ?¦ For all his faults... there was something magnificently bullish about Roald Dahl, a childlike refusal to accept the world as it was. Donald Sturrock captures this side of him beautifully, so much so that I finished STORYTELLER feeling... his was a heroic life” Mail on Sunday by Craig Brown


”Pig-headed, domineering, mendacious, boastful, foul-mouthed, coarse, boorish--as you tick off the adjectives that describe Roald Dahl, the chances of a biographer coming up with a winning portrait seem slim. Yet Donald Sturrock has managed it with zest and aplomb. What shines out from almost every page of this intimately informed biography is Dahl’s vitality, courage and passion for lifeâ?¦What he was was vivid and dynamic, and this vivid, dynamic book gives you the illusion that you knew him”. Sunday Times by John Carey

”It’s hard to imagine anyone do a better job on him than Donald Sturrockâ?¦ consistently shrewd, well able to embrace his subject’s many contradictions, generally sympathetic and yet never blind to Dahl’s less attractive sideâ?¦ it’s exemplary” Daily Mail by John Preston