Roald Dahl sisters. Dahl always maintained that his mother and her stories had a strong influence on his writing. In one interview, he mentioned: "She was a great teller of tales. Her memory was prodigious and nothing that ever happened to her in her life was forgotten." When Dahl started writing and publishing his famous books for children, he created a grandmother character in "The Witches" and later stated that she was based directly on his own mother as a tribute. In 1961, Dahl hosted and wrote for a science fiction and horror television anthology series called "Way Out", which preceded the
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".