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Childhood

Roald Dahl was born in 1916 at Villa Marie, Fairwater Road, in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales, to Norwegians Harald Dahl (1863–1920) and Sofie Magdalene Dahl (née Hesselberg) (1885–1967). Dahl's father, a wealthy shipbroker and self-made man, had emigrated to Britain from Sarpsborg, Norway and settled in Cardiff in the 1880s with his first wife, Frenchwoman Marie Beaurin-Gresser. They had two children together (Ellen Marguerite and Louis) before her death in 1907. Roald's mother belonged to a well-established Norwegian family of lawyers, priests in the state church and wealthy merchants and estate owners, and emigrated to Britain when she married his father in 1911. Dahl was named after Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen. His first language was Norwegian, which he spoke at home with his parents and his sisters Astri, Alfhild, and Else. The children were raised in Norway's Lutheran state church, the Church of Norway, and were baptised at the Norwegian Church, Cardiff. His maternal grandmother Ellen Wallace was a granddaughter of the member of parliament Georg Wallace and a descendant of an early 18th-century Scottish immigrant to Norway.

Dahl's sister Astri died from appendicitis at age seven in 1920 when Dahl was three years old, and his father died of pneumonia at age 57 several weeks later. Later in the same year, his youngest sister, Asta, was born. Upon his death, Harald Dahl left a fortune assessed for probate of £158,917 10s. 0d. (equivalent to £ 8,062,873 in 2023). Dahl's mother decided to remain in Wales instead of returning to Norway to live with relatives, as her husband had wanted their children to be educated in English schools, which he considered the world's best. When he was six years old, Dahl met his idol Beatrix Potter, author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit featuring the mischievous Peter Rabbit, the first licensed fictional character. The meeting, which took place at Potter's home, Hill Top in the Lake District, north west England, was dramatised in the 2020 television film, Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse.

Dahl first attended The Cathedral School, Llandaff. At age eight, he and four of his friends were caned by the headmaster after putting a dead mouse in a jar of gobstoppers at the local sweet shop, which was owned by a "mean and loathsome" old woman named Mrs Pratchett. The five boys named their prank the " Great Mouse Plot of 1924 ". Mrs Pratchett inspired Dahl's creation of the cruel headmistress Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, and a prank, this time in a water jug belonging to Trunchbull, would also appear in the book. Gobstoppers were a favourite sweet among British schoolboys between the two World Wars, and Dahl referred to them in his fictional Everlasting Gobstopper which was featured in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Dahl transferred to St Peter's boarding school in Weston-super-Mare. His parents had wanted him to be educated at an English public school, and this proved to be the nearest because of the regular ferry link across the Bristol Channel. Dahl's time at St Peter's was unpleasant; he was very homesick and wrote to his mother every week but never revealed his unhappiness to her. After her death in 1967, he learned that she had saved every one of his letters; they were broadcast in abridged form as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week in 2016 to mark the centenary of his birth. Dahl wrote about his time at St Peter's in his autobiography Boy: Tales of Childhood. Excelling at conkers —a traditional autumnal children's game in Britain and Ireland played using the seeds of horse chestnut trees—Dahl recollected, "at the ages of eight, nine and ten, conkers brought sunshine to our lives during the dreary autumn term".