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Narrator (2:15)

Roald Dahl is 23 years old as he soars through the sky. The cockpit of the RAF fighter he's sitting in has no roof. He's 6 foot 6, so his head juts well up above the windshield, completely exposed. His goggles offer zero protection at this speed. Wind and sand and debris are just assaulting his face. He's basically blind and every Single breath is a battle. He thinks he may have veered off course, has no idea where he is. Somewhere over the Libyan desert, maybe. He can't get his bearings. Blind in the chaos, just desperately trying to navigate while entering. Enemy fire tears through the air around him. He can feel the vibrations of bullets whizzing past his head. Oh, and Dahl got inside a plane for the very first time. Less than six months earlier. Writer Matthew Dennison tells us that Dahl had taken off from northern Egypt this evening. In his pocket, classified documents pinpointing his entire squadron's location. Within the hour, the desert sunset gives way to absolute darkness. His fuel gauge dropping, Dahl realizes with growing dread that he has strayed hopelessly off course. Then, catastrophe. The underbelly of his aircraft catches a boulder hiding in the darkness. Metal shrieks as the plane's nose pitches forward and crashes to the ground. Crumpling like paper. Dahl is catapulted against the instrument panel. The impact drives his nose backward through his face. His skull fractures. Blood runs hot and thick down his skin. Dennison writes that Dahl can no longer feel where his teeth should be. Disoriented, he does feel the approaching heat of flames that threaten to consume both him and his aircraft. His overalls already burning, Dahl drags himself away from the twisted wreckage as fast as he can. Each inch across the sand is agony. Behind him, the inferno reaches the plane's ammunition. Its machine guns begin firing wildly, bullets kicking up sand in all directions. By some miracle of chance or fate, Dahl has crawled just far enough. The bullets don't find him. As shock overtakes his battered body, sleep finally claims him. Let's now travel back to a year before that devastating crash. This is before Dahl was sent to Washington, before he was recruited into the Irregulars, before he spent weekends mixing martinis with the President. Dahl's just a guy in a room in his early 20s, trying to figure out what to do with his life. All Dahl knows for sure is that right now he needs to escape his family's home in Buckinghamshire, which feels like a damn prison. He's desperate for some adventure. Dahl is someone who's always, always looking for adventure. It's impossible to say for certain where this spirit comes from, but the tragedy of his youth offers a pretty good clue. When Dahl was three, his seven year old sister Astri died of appendicitis. The family had barely processed this loss when, just three weeks later, Dahl's father died. Technically, Dahl's father died of pneumonia, but he basically chose not to fight the illness because of his depression. Over Astrid. The two deaths in a row like that were an earthquake for young Dahl. Buckinghamshire, despite its beauty, is stained by these memories for him. If you can remember the Forbidden Forest scenes in the Harry Potter movies, you've glimpsed these woods. But what appears magical on screen is suffocating to Dahl. He understood that if he didn't break free soon, he'd be trapped, bogged down here, forced into the tedious business that his father, a ship broker, had been so successful in. Dahl's desire for adventure is something he shares in common with a lot of great writers, desperate to experience everything in order to have something to write about. A plot, a character, a situation, an emotion. Writers in Dahl's era are expected to be deeply physically engaged with the world. Not just observers, but participants. Which feels different from today, right? Today's writers often prioritize things like activism and family and intellectual engagement over physical risk taking. But physicality aside, there's no substitute for adventure and new experiences in a writer's life. My creative writing students at Yale always ask me how to make it. As screenwriters. I encourage them to go live their lives a little, get engaged with the world in some fashion. Because young writers who just move right to LA after graduation and start work in an agency's mailroom all end up writing scripts that feel less like real life and more like echoes of TV shows they've seen. When Dahl graduates school, he sets out on his first great adventure and applies to Shell Oil. I know, I know. Becoming a trainee at an oil company does not sound like a cutting edge prospect, but back in the late 30s, it is as exciting as it gets. Shell Oil is one of the hottest companies in the world. Here's Tony Curtis trying to woo Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot by masquerading as the heir to guess.

Poshmark Host (7:34)

You collect Shell.

Narrator (7:35)

Yes. So did my father and my grandfather, you might say we had a passion for Shells. That's why we named the oil company after it, Shell Oil. There's massive demand for oil, for budding car companies and aviation. Joining Shell is like joining an AI company today. And the most attractive part for Dahl is that you're guaranteed to be sent somewhere across the globe, adventure served up on a silver platter. Dahl gets posted in East Africa fully aware what a commitment this is, as he points out in an interview by Peter Wallace in thrill maker from 1985.

Roald Dahl (Interviewee) (8:08)

You see, in those days, they didn't have airplanes. We're talking about 1935. To go to somewhere like Africa was a long way. It was a two And a half week trip in the boat. When you went, you went for three years.

Narrator (8:25)

But it's all totally thrilling. Dahl immerses himself in the local culture, learning Swahili and enjoying the adventure of it all. He doesn't realize it, but he's setting himself up for a lifetime's worth of characters, too. When Dahl invents Charlie Bucket of chocolate factory fame, he actually models him on one of the young African boys he befriends in Tanzania. It's only on later drafts, under pressure from his British publishers, that Charlie becomes white. But it's fascinating to think how groundbreaking the book might have been. Charlie's family represents extreme poverty. Remember those four grandparents all sharing that one giant bed? Making them black would have transformed the story into a powerful statement about racial inequality. And when Charlie has his triumph at the end, it could have served as a broader metaphor for overcoming systemic prejudice. Anyway, Dahl's work for Shell eventually grows tedious for him. He's basically selling oil to farmers across the vastness of Tanzania. Not a great deal of intelligence or imagination was required. He later admits the idea of rising through the ranks to become an executive someday sounds like death to him. He feels the itch to keep moving. But here's what I think is really driving Dahl. He's trying to figure out not only what kind of man he is, but what it means to be a man. After Dahl lost his father, he was brought up by his mother and his many, many sisters. There were never any adult men in his life. Why this is so relevant is that the different worlds Dahl goes into in his 20s are like the most basic fantasies of what a child thinks it means to be a man in the mid 20th century. First, he'll try business with Shell Oil, then head to war to become a fighter pilot. Then he becomes a spy, a serial playboy and seducer of women. He's trying on all these different macho exteriors, seeing what fits. And I mean, I get it, though. We're living in very different times. I struggle with this, too. Am I a man? Not in a way my grandfather would recognize. I have a wife and kids and a career, but with a gun to my head, I could maybe tell you what pliers are for. Maybe. For Dahl, in the late 1930s, World War II was knocking. Some of his heroes, like Hemingway and Tolkien, fought in the First World War. Now history is offering his chance. He hears about British forces in Tanzania needing help, and he jumps at it. He abandons Shell Oil and enlists as a special constable with the King's African Rifles. His assignment is to arrest any German attempting to escape across the border into neutral East Africa. Dahl helps detain a couple hundred Germans whose only crime is being German. He moves these innocent people into a camp of barbed wire to be held for who knows how long. It shakes Dahl's conscience. This may not be the adventure he's after. During the long days patrolling the border in the vicious sun, Dahl watches warplanes fly overhead. Now that looks like freedom to him. He gets an idea he'll volunteer for the Royal Air Force, though he's never even been inside a plane before. He buys a car and drives 600 miles to Nairobi to enroll in flight training school. He quickly realizes he's not a great fit. Literally. Dahl crams himself into Gloucester Gladiators, Tiger Moths and Hawker Hurricanes. Picture the plane from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Harrison Ford and Sean Connery escape from German fighters. These are open air cockpits designed for pilots who are 5 foot 7 to 5 10. At 6 6. Dahl's head sticks way up above the windshield like an NBA player squeezed into a tiny convertible with the top down, his knees pulled up to his chest, and his face constantly battered by rushing wind. Despite all that soaring up in the air, something magical happens. Dahl falls in love with flying. This passion will re emerge later in his writing. Several of his young characters escape their earthbound troubles by literally flying away, most famously in James and the Giant Beach. The British Air Force is in such dire need of fighters that Dahl is quickly sent to the front lines before he even completes combat training. Sixteen other newly minted pilots go with him. But by war's end, only three of the 16 will survive, including Dahl. That's how close we were to never having heard of Willy Wonka or Matilda. According to writer Nadia Cohen, Dahl's first kill comes quickly. He shoots down a German plane and returns to base with the sobering realization that he's probably just ended another man's life. His conscience is rattled again, just like during those Border patrol arrests. Is he built for this? He's in his early 20s. He's sensitive, thoughtful, and he knows what it feels like to lose a father and sister well before their time. Now he's taken the life of a young stranger, someone who probably has his own father, sister, brother. Dahl knows precisely what that family will endure. The next day, Dahl finds himself in another air battle. He shoots down a second German plane, killing another pilot. He's affected, but he finds it gets a bit easier to compartmentalize. Two days later, in the Battle of Athens, Dahl and his squadron are vastly outnumbered. It'll be a miracle if any of them survive. Dahl describes it as a long dogfight in which 15 Hurricanes fought for half an hour with between 150 and 200 German bombers. Four of Dahl's fellow pilots are shot down right before his eyes. Dahl expends every last bit of ammunition he carries. When he finally lands back a base, his plane is riddled with bullet holes. Dahl ends up needing a full month to recuperate. Then he hears the decimated remnants of his squadron are reassembling in Haifa. More adventure awaits. Dahl finds another car and drives to Israel. He flies over French air bases every day for the next month, according to Cohen, shooting down at least two more aircraft. Dahl keeps crashing his own planes, but always somehow walks away until the crash that opened this episode. When Dahl eventually writes that horrific crash into his memoirs, he conspicuously excludes the fact that there was another pilot with him that day in the Libyan desert. Maybe, Dahl thinks, having company made the whole thing less heroic. Even more curious, official RAF records show Dahl crash landed due to low fuel after getting lost. But Dahl insists he was shot down. Hmm. In both of Dahl's memoirs about his childhood, he perpetuates myths like this about himself. Now, to be fair, the memoirs are written in the style we associate with his fiction, so it's almost like a wink, wink, don't believe everything I'm telling you, folks. Dahl has the same habit of myth making in interviews throughout his life. Now, with some celebrities, we just call this straight up lying. But with Dahl, I'm not sure I'd use that word. It's as if he's acknowledging that people expect him to be Willy Wonka or the bfg, so they shouldn't take what he says at face value. But of course, this makes his later problematic remarks and interviews more complicated to deal with. We'll grapple with how to reconcile Dahl's dedication to defeating the Nazis as a young man, which is at least somewhat inextricable from helping save the Jews of Europe with the charges of anti Semitism against him as a much older man. For weeks after Dahl's crash in the Libyan desert, he lies in a military hospital, unable to even open his eyes. Doctors are sure he'll be blind. He'll spend the rest of his life in darkness. Here's Dahl many years later, reflecting on the toll of all these crashes.

Roald Dahl (Interviewee) (16:05)

I've had so many operations. I'm tied together with bits of string. I've had two hip replacements. My spine's been operated on many times from an airplane crash. And this year I had three massive operations on my tummy, But I'm all right there. But I'm a bit of a wreck physically.

Narrator (16:26)

I always laugh when I hear him say tummy there. Dahl speaks the way he writes. There's this childlike quality of someone who never fully grew up. An old man who still says tummy with a completely straight face woven inside. A much more gruesome, sobering account of horrible pain. And the mixture of those elements are kind of the hallmarks of his books too, right? The juxtaposition of childlike wonder alongside genuine darkness. It's the BFG's gentle dream catching coexisting with child gobbling giants and the whimsy of Willy Wonka. Alongside children facing horrific if comical fates, Dahl ends up spending six long months in that hospital. Slowly and almost miraculously, he regains his vision. He emerges with the knowledge that he's cheated death, which encourages him to take even more risks going forward. He now knows he can survive a fall. Dahl isn't alone among great artists who spend significant time recovering from catastrophic injuries. Frida Kahlo had devastating trauma from a bus crash when she was slightly younger than Dahl. Spending months in a cast. That's when she began to think about those haunting portraits. Similarly, Stephen King was hit by a van and nearly killed, leading to months of painful recovery. He was older than Dahl or Kahlo, but he had not yet written some of his best work. In these long recoveries, not only do you learn to endure the solitude and loneliness of the creative life, but you also have so much time to reflect on your ideas. And maybe you also gain insight into suffering or pain or healing. Like Kahlo and King, the lifelong chronic pain that Dahl deals with after the crash majorly infiltrates his work and reshapes his personality. Just recently, the US Navy published a confidential report, Odin's Eye, suggesting the extreme conditions faced by fighter pilots. Hygiene, maneuvers and repeated physical trauma like Dahl had can lead to long term effects on memory, mood and behavior. Could lingering brain trauma from his pilot days have contributed to Dahl's sharp temper? Could the injuries account for what some people very much, including his first wife, describe as his prickly personality? His wife's nickname for him, after all, was Roald the Rotten. And might the brain trauma also account for his vivid, dark imagination? His headaches from the crash become so intense that he blacks out regularly, which is not what you want to hear if you're his commanding officer setting him up in the air. Dahl is Desperate to keep flying, to keep the adventure going. But the RAF grounds him. His flying days are over. Dahl is a mess, terrified he'll have no choice but to go back to Buckinghamshire, back to that landscape haunted by childhood loss, back to a conventional life that seems to him worse than death. Luckily, that's when Dahl is recruited to Washington for an adventure so strange that even his imagination couldn't have conjured it. In our last episode, I talked about Dahl's life in the shadowy spy game in Washington with the Irregular. He quickly makes friends there with other spies who, like him, go on to create some of the most iconic cultural touchstones of the 20th century. Like Ian Fleming, the creator of a spy as famous for how he likes his martinis as anything else. A martini, shaken, not stirred. And Dahl's Georgetown roommate, David Ogilvy, who later revolutionizes modern advertising and serves as an inspiration for Don Draper on Mad Men. You never say thank you. That's what the money is for. Plus, Noel Coward, the British playwright and wit who redefined theater, interviewed here by Dick Cavett. You're. What is the word for when one has terrific, prolific qualities?

Roald Dahl (Interviewee) (20:04)

Talent. Yeah.

Narrator (20:07)

Four of the most influential storytellers and fabulists of the century, all hanging out together, playing spy versus spy. Predictably, as these charismatic operatives carry out their spy work, they increasingly find themselves under the FBI's suspicious gaze. J. Edgar Hoover, the authoritarian head of the Bureau, has very rigid rules for his agents. Identical suits, military short haircuts, and absolutely no facial hair. So imagine how he feels about these arrogant playboys of British Intelligence operating on his turf. The FBI turned a blind eye to the Irregulars when they started, but at this point, it's like, are we really just going to let these British secret agents do whatever the hell they want on American soil? The Bureau attempts to get a bill through Congress putting the Irregulars, including Dahl, under its supervision. They open up secret files on Dahl and every other Irregular. The noose is tightening. Finally, William Stevenson, the head of the Irregulars, has no choice but to agree that all 137British intelligence agents in the US will run all their missions by J. Edgar Hoover. But no one thinks Stevenson will actually honor this agreement. According to writer Janet Conant, Stevenson's superiors in England dispatch emissaries to him to verify his compliance. Spies infiltrating spies. One in particular, who we'll call Agent X, keeps feeding damaging reports about the Irregulars back to London. Stevenson is furious and turns to his most resourceful agent for help. Roald Dahl. Dahl devises an elegant trap. He invites Agent X to his Georgetown apartment for drinks, a seemingly innocent social call between colleagues. But hidden within Dahl's living room is a microphone, capturing every word. As the evening progresses and booze flows, Dahl skillfully steers the conversation, encouraging X to disparage his employers back in Britain. The secretly recorded conversation is promptly dispatched to London. Agent X is recalled immediately, the threat to Stevenson neutralized for now through Dahl's cunning. Years later, this real life espionage operation will resurface in Doll's fiction, transformed into a chilling short story about a wealthy husband and wife who invite a younger couple to their home. The hosts secretly install a microphone in the guest bedroom, eavesdropping on their visitors most intimate conversations.

Redfin Host (22:26)

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Roald Dahl (Interviewee) (24:29)

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Narrator (26:00)

The threat of the FBI has rattled Dahl, making him very aware that the Irregulars days are numbered and therefore so are his. He's desperate not to go back home to England, to his mother's house. But what's next? What's he really trained for? He sees his pals Fleming and Ogilvy and Coward setting themselves up for future career success in other fields. They all have mentors who seem to be guiding them. So Dahl begins looking for his own mentor. One way I could have structured this podcast, by the way, is to tell Dahl's story by following the Hero's Journey, Joseph Campbell's outline for great adventurers from Odysseus to Luke Skywalker, which Dahl fits to a tee. All heroes, according to Campbell, both fictional and real go through a series of distinct stages. First is a call to adventure when the hero gets pulled out of their ordinary world by a quest. For Dahl, this is being recruited to Washington to join the Irregulars. Among the many stages that follow, there's one particularly relevant here. Meeting the mentor. Once the hero commits to their quest, a guide or magical helper appears. Think Obi Wan Kenobi in Star wars or Morpheus in the Matrix. For Dahl, it's Charles Marsh. An arrogant, well connected, obscenely wealthy newspaper tycoon. Marsh started out as a journalist, rising up to become managing editor of the Cincinnati Post. But his hunger for wealth and status led him to buy every newspaper he could get his hands on. By the time he meets Dahl, Marsh is filthy rich and has grown bored of the newspaper game. He's putting all his energy and resources into his passion, the war effort. Here's how Robert Caro, the extraordinary author of the Years of Lyndon Johnson series, describes Marsh having made money, he liked to play the patron with it. A tall man, six foot three, he had the broad, high forehead and the beaked nose of a Roman emperor and a manner to match. Tips to head waiters were dispensed with a gesture reminiscent of a king tossing coins to subjects. Marsh traffic some power. If you're in his orbit, you're introduced to the right people and you're in a position to know and be known. Marsh owns a grand mansion on R Street in Georgetown in which he's always playing host. DC insiders, artists, politicians and power brokers of all sorts can just come on in, have a drink, talk, or more often, negotiate. To give you a sense of the house and the man, Marsh commissions a large oil portrait of himself and hangs it over the mantel in the main sitting room. I love that detail. It says so much about the guy, doesn't it? I'm imagining my wife's reaction if I brought home a big old painting of myself and announced we were hanging it over the couch. She'd be into it, right? Vice President Henry Wallace is a constant presence at Marsh's mansion. Cabinet members, media titans and diplomats circulate through the rooms, and so does young Roald Dahl. Marsh's oldest daughter, Antoinette, says of Dahl, we all just adored him, especially my father. We sort of adopted him. Roald was a real charmer when he wanted to be. He was great fun to be around. Adopted is the right word. This is the family that Dahlia wants, not the one colored by tragedy in Buckinghamshire. He wants the one that offers the key to success in Washington. And having access to all the visitors at Our street is a gold mine for a young spy. One night at a game of High Stakes poker, Dahl is in a funk, losing hand after hand. Drinking too much, growing frustrated. He doesn't have much money, so every dollar he loses is giant. But he likes his next hand, so he goes all in, not realizing, or maybe not yet savvy enough to appreciate that he's playing against Washington power brokers, the ultimate bluffers and hustlers. Dahl loses his entire paycheck on this one hand, which is devastating for him. The player he loses it to, though? Harry Truman. Dahl may be getting cleaned up, but the information, intel, and connections he's making are priceless. Charles Marsh at this moment is in his 50s, he's married, and he also has a much, much younger girlfriend. Did you not see that coming from a guy who hangs a giant painting of himself in his living room? This younger woman happens to have a very whimsical Dahlian name, Alice Glass. She's six feet tall with movie star good looks and long blonde hair. According to Conant, the first time Marsh sees Alice, she's stark naked. A pale, shimmering goddess rising unexpectedly from his swimming pool. This was when Marsh was in his 40s. One of the most powerful newspaper magnates in the country. Alice was 19. During their relationship, Alice carries on her own affairs with several other men, most of whom are in Marsh's social circle, according to Marsh's daughter Antoinette. Again, Alice has a crush on Dahl, but Doll wisely rejects her. He has so much to lose. Dahl knows what happened when Lancelot slept with King Arthur's wife, namely, the fall of Camelot. Alys is furious at Daw's rejection. Men do not turn her down. She's cold to Doll whenever she sees him from then on. By the way, one man who did not turn Alice down was Lyndon Johnson. LBJ was pals with Marsh. Marsh put the weight of his newspaper editorials behind LBJ and helped him win his first race. LBJ paid Marsh back by having an affair with Alice. Marsh was apoplectic when he discovered it. He got LBJ elected. But Alice and LBJ's affair was much more than a fling. It continued for 25 years. What eventually broke them up was Alice's passionate opposition to the Vietnam War. In all his time with Marsh, Dahl has always presented himself as a simple employee of the British Embassy. So how does Marsh feel when he discovers that young Dahl is actually a spy? Will he be even more annoyed with Dahl than he was with his other lying backstabbing? Lanky protege. Will he cast him into the wilderness? This young man he's been so generous with has been infiltrating his home, reporting back to the Brits on all his fancy guests. It's just the opposite. Marsh has the same goal as Dahl to defeat the Nazis. So he's tickled when he discovers Dahl has been keeping the secret. Antoinette Marsh remembers, my father said, look here, we're on the same team. We can help each other. Marsh quickly becomes essential to Dahl's spy work, introducing him to influential people and tutoring him on cultivating secret sources, which he picked up in his newspaper days. By this time, Dahl is already well versed in the art of seduction. He plays to Marsh's ego by asking the older man advice about his future and tantalizing him with a peek at his orders from the Irregulars whenever he can, just enough to whet Marsh's appetite. When Dahl spends a weekend with the Roosevelts in Hyde park, for instance, he makes a private copy of his report and surreptitiously gives it to Marsh, which the older man hungrily consumes. In their private talks, Dahl even adds a few details he observed about FDR that are too scandalous to put in his official report. Isaiah Berlin, who works in the British Embassy and later becomes one of the most influential philosophers of the century, is also summoned on occasion to the R Street mansion to see how Marsh can help the war effort. Berlin's take on Marsh is that there's a screw faintly loose somewhere. I felt frightened of him, berlin says, as if in the presence of someone slightly unbalanced. If Dahl feels the same, he keeps it to himself. Marsh is a man who can deliver him the world, screw loose or not. Continuing his work for the Irregulars, part of Dahl's assignment is to romance his way through a bevy of older, powerful, influential women. His dance card is a who's who of American wealth and privilege. Elizabeth Arden, the cosmetic superstar, Millicent Rogers, the Standard Oil heiress And Evelyn Wachs McClane, the gold mine heiress. Dahl's looks and confidence, plus his background as a fighter pilot, help explain why he's so attractive to women. But he also just seems to understand women in a way that most men, especially men of that time, aren't capable of or don't care to. Proof lives in his fiction. Some of his most memorable characters are female Sophie from the bfg, Veruca Salt, and Violet Beauregard from a certain chocolate factory, and, of course, Matilda Wormwood. These characters aren't just unique and inventive they have a vulnerability and a truth that his male characters often lack. Dahl also finds time for affairs that have nothing to do with espionage. One of his most significant relationships is with the beautiful French movie star Annabella. She's deeply affected by the war. Her brother had been shot and killed trying to escape the Nazis, which may well have been what bonded her and Dahl. When they meet, she's already married to someone rich and successful. Like so many of Dahl's other girlfriends, Annabella's husband is movie star Tyrone Power. Power was one of Hollywood's first action heroes. It's unclear how Dahl feels about cuckolding this giant star, though honestly, it's possible Power doesn't even care since the rumor is that he's having his own affair with Judy Garland. But as we'll see later, Dahl is drawn to women who are, were, or had recently been in long term relationships with handsome movie stars. Maybe it's an ego trip when a woman who's with an Adonis celebrity chooses to be with Doll Instead, Dahl credits Anabella with teaching him about sexual like Charles Marsh, she becomes a mentor. Dahl stays in touch with her for decades, often seeking her advice during turbulent years in his future marriages. By a certain point, it feels like Dahl has dated or seduced every available and unavailable woman in Washington. He's pooped, but British intelligence is not done with him. They agree at least to transfer him out of DC for someone always seeking adventure and looking for glamorous, beautiful women to spend time with, Dahl is sent to what will be his personal Xanadu Manhattan of the 1940s. The Irregulars have their New York offices on the 35th and 36th floors of 30 Rockefeller center, the same iconic Art Deco skyscraper that will later house the Tonight Show, Late Night and Saturday Night Live, which seems like a super weird place to stash an organization devoted to conducting style spy work. Maybe operating out of 30 Rock is partly a way to convince the public that they're not doing anything too shady. After all, their public goal is simply to promote British interests in America. Fascinating side note, Dahl is mesmerized by the incredible speed of the elevator at 30 Rock, which is unlike anything he's ever experienced and becomes an inspiration for his Chocolate Factory sequel, Charlie and the Glass Elevator. Dahl instantly takes to the glamorous scene. Despite the challenges of the war, the city is still a hub of fashion and art and nightlife. This is the era of the Stork Club, with regulars like Sinatra and Hemingway, the Copacabana, the Cotton Club and the 21 Club Dahl dives in headfirst, wringing out every last drop of it that he possibly can. Amid the champagne and midnight conversations, he finds himself even more in his element than he'd been in Washington, working even more in his favor. The war has led to a significant shortage of eligible men in the city. Although my wife would say there's always a shortage of eligible men in this city, which I think is an insult to me. Like, if there were more eligible men, that I wouldn't have gotten so lucky. I digress. The point is, Dahl is even more in demand as a romantic partner in New York than he'd been in D.C. which is saying something again. According to Marsh's daughter Antoinette, Dahl was very arrogant with his women, but he got away with it. The uniform didn't hurt one bit, and he was an ace. Girls just fell at Roald's feet. Dahl is still obsessed with figuring out what he's gonna do when the war ends. Going back to Bucky, I'm sure, is out of the question. His ambitions are coalescing around storytelling. Keep in mind, this is before he writes the gremlin story that gets him invited to FDR's White House. Right now, Dahl is mostly writing short autobiographical stories, and they're all rejected for publication. He grows incredibly frustrated, which is mirrored in some of his later protagonists, like Matilda or James from the Giant Peach, who will themselves to greatness despite being cruelly underestimated. Dahl's first break as a writer is one of those amazing stories of luck meeting talent at just the right moment. I truly love this origin story. Here's Dahl telling it years later in Thrillmaker, a 1985 documentary where he's interviewed during a visit back to Norway.

Roald Dahl (Interviewee) (39:03)

They wanted people who had been in combat to publish stories in the American papers to give Britain a boost. And a man was sent to me, a famous writer called C.S. forrester, who wrote Captain Hornblower stories. And he came to see me, and he said, I will take you out to lunch, and you will tell me your most exciting adventure in the raf. And I will write it, and it'll be published because I can always get them published, and it'll be good for Britain. So I said, lovely. I was terribly excited to go out to this famous ride. I'd read everything he'd written.

Narrator (39:39)

C.S. forster isn't read as much today, but the guy is a giant. In Dahl's era, it's the equivalent of Aaron Sorkin just swinging by my office and asking me to lunch. As we've seen, Dahl does not lack confidence. So he's not as petrified going into that meeting as I would have been. He continues.

Roald Dahl (Interviewee) (39:55)

We had lunch and halfway through lunch we had roast duck, and he was trying to eat his. And I was trying to tell him the story and he was trying to take notes and. And I said, look, I'll go home tonight and scribble this down roughly and send it to you and you can put it right and that'll be it and that'll save you and you can eat your roast duck in peace. And he said, how super. So I did it.

Narrator (40:25)

You know what I love thinking about here? What if Forster hadn't ordered the duck? What if he'd had a ham sandwich and therefore a free hand to write notes? What's about to happen might never have happened. And this podcast would be about some other writer. It's these tiny moments of chance, a roast duck rather than a ham sandwich, that sometimes alter the entire trajectory of a life. Dahl It's a funny thing.

Roald Dahl (Interviewee) (40:50)

When I got home in the evening and started writing, sort of went very nicely and I felt the story growing under me and so I wrote it and I sent it to him. Didn't expect to hear anymore. And a week later I got a letter from him saying, I was expecting you to send me notes. You have sent me a complete story. Did you know that you were a writer?

Narrator (41:14)

Did you know that you were a writer? When you're starting out, hearing that you actually have talent and might be able to do the crazy thing you dream of doing from someone who's already made it is everything in a completely different field. Jerry Seinfeld talks about doing one of his first ever stand up sets when a much more established comic, Jackie Mason, calls him over, telling Jerry how jealous he is because Jerry is clearly going to be a huge star. Seinfeld talks about that quick interaction with Mason being enough to live off of for years. It's a stamp of approval. And Forster is true to his word about getting the story published under Dahl's name. His agent secures it a slot in the Saturday Evening Post, which has a circulation of about 3 million at the time. Dahl is paid $187 for the story, which is like $3,000 today. It's printed over two pages in the August 1, 1942 edition. But all of that is frosting. Did you know you were a writer? Is what will carry Dahl for years. Dahl is now a published writer. He's 26 years old. In many ways, his life has just begun.

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Narrator (46:01)

The elation of being published is soon tempered by a major change in circumstance for Dahl. As the war ends, Dahl is informed that his services in America are no longer required. He hasn't seen his mother or sister in years. He takes a deep breath and goes back to Buckinghamshire. The ghosts of his father and sister hang over the place. He's been going from adventure to adventure, avoiding his home for years. His mother, who can guilt trip with the best of him, insists that her beloved only son move in with her while he's in town. And for a time, it's not as bad as Dahl imagined, according to Conant. Again, Dahl loses himself in the comforting rhythms of rural life. He manages his mother's farm, tends to the livestock and loafs. Now, I can't stress enough what a bonkers transition this must have been from international man of mystery seducing his way across D.C. and New York on a Monday to small town farmer living at home with mom that Friday. Writer Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway's wife, visits Dahl around this time and says she perceives a suffocating atmosphere of adoration by his mother. Dahl soon begins gambling again, but it's not Harry Truman sitting across the table anymore. He gets into dog racing, which, I mean, has that ever led to good things for anyone? He even breeds his own greyhounds to compete and, shockingly, loses a ton of the family's money at the track. Dahl is spiraling. His sisters start worrying. Will Dahl become one of those people who is electric as a young man with light in his eyes and a world of potential, then returns from his adventures to drink, gamble, lose his hair, gain a belly, and live out a ho hum existence in his mother's basement, squandering all that youthful promise. Luckily for Dahl, his great mentor, his Obi Wan is watching Charles Marsh decides to intervene. He practically kidnaps Dahl away from Buckinghamshire, brings him to New York, and puts him up in his lavish townhouse on 92nd Street. If Dahl had been paying his own way, he'd more likely be in a studio apartment with roommates on the Lower east side. Marsh insists on underwriting all of Dahl's expenses until Dahl can start making his own money as a writer. That's how strongly Marsh believes in him. I'm blown away by this, and I think Dahl is too. He basically puts it all in a book later on, it's Willy Wonka handing over his factory to Charlie. It's an act of extraordinary patronage from a mysterious older man of means to a young man in whom he sees great promise. Marsh believes in Dahl's talent every bit as much as C.S. forster did. And like Forrester, Marsh has connections. Once Marsh has got Dahl in New York, he introduces the young writer to the most powerful magazine editor in town, Harold Ross, the eccentric, meticulous founding editor of the New Yorker. The New Yorker, then as it is now, is the ultimate destination for short fiction. Despite his often brusque personality, Ross is deeply committed to the writers he works with, nurturing household names like Dorothy Parker, James Thurber and J.D. salinger. Ross takes an instant liking to Dahl's stories. This is huge for Dahl. The New Yorker buys several of Dahl's stories in a row, including his now classic Skin, which follows an old destitute man on whose back a famous artist once tattooed a painting. When art collectors realize its worth, they offer the destitute man huge amounts of money for his tattoo. The story then takes a really dark turn, implying that the collectors intend to claim the artwork off the man's back by any means necessary. The story explores the intersection of art and commerce, exploitation, and the high personal cost of other people's greed, three themes that Dahl will return to in his work and in his private life for decades. All of Dahl's stories in this period are dark, twisty, witty, somewhat gruesome, and totally unique. And this includes his gremlin story, which we discussed Eleanor Roosevelt loving so much. But all sorts of readers are going crazy for the stories. The New York Herald Tribune writes that Dahl is developing something like a cult of fans. Dahl can't believe it's. All happening. His old pal from the Irregulars, Noel Coward, is also a little surprised, but for a different reason, saying about Dahl, the stories are brilliant and his imagination is fabulous. Unfortunately, there is in all of them an underlying streak of cruelty and macabre unpleasantness and a crudely adolescent emphasis on sex, coward continues. This is strange because Roald is a sensitive and gentle creature. Mixing his gentle, sensitive side with his attraction to cruelty and unpleasantness is, of course, what will make Dahl more successful and more widely read than Coward or any other living writer. That is, if he can buckle down and focus on his work. Because while we've heard Dahl spent his 20s spying, seducing and manipulating his way across D.C. and New York, he's about to fall prey to the seduction of of something with almost infinite allure. Dahl, the master manipulator, is about to discover what it means to be manipulated by something far more cunning than himself, something that will whisper promises of glory while slowly, invisibly tightening its grip around his throat. And right now, he's walking straight into its embrace. The Secret World of Roald Dahl is produced by Imagine Audio and Parallax Studios for iHeart Podcasts. Created and written by me, Aaron Tracy Produced by Matt Schrader post production by Wind Hill Studios with editing, scoring and sound design by Mark Henry Phillips editing by Ryan Seaton music by APM executive producers Nathan Klokke, Kara Welker, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Aaron Tracy Additional voice performances and recreation by Mark Henry Phillips and 11 laps. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and review the Secret World of Roald Dahl on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Copyright 2026, Imagine Entertainment, iHeartMedia and Parallel Foreign.

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