Roald Dahl children include "James and the Giant Peach", "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "Matilda", "The Witches", "Fantastic Mr Fox", "The BFG", "The Twits" and "George's Marvellous Medicine". His adult works include "Tales of the Unexpected". Roald Dahl was born in 1916 at Villa Marie, Fairwater Road, in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales, to Norwegian parents, Harald Dahl and Sofie Magdalene Dahl ("née" Hesselberg). Dahl's father had emigrated to the UK from Sarpsborg in Norway, and settled in Cardiff in the 1880s. His mother came over and married his father in 1911. Dahl was named after the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen. His first
Roald Dahl bibliography in his children's books. His mother also nurtured a passion in the young Dahl for reading and literature. During the Second World War Dahl was a pilot in the Royal Air Force (RAF) until he crashed in the Libyan desert; the subsequent injuries left him unfit to fly. He was posted to Washington as an assistant air attaché, ostensibly a diplomatic post, but which also included espionage and propaganda work. In 1942 the writer C.S. Forester asked him to provide details of his experiences in North Africa which Forester hoped to use in an article in "The Saturday Evening Post".