For many children Roald Dahl is synonymous with reading.
Fighter ace, surgical device inventor, FDR’s drinking buddy. And then there’s his services to literature, and literacy.
For Roald Dahl’s 100th birthday, the Oxford English Dictionary added several of his words – that’s how we’ve come to think of them – to their volumes.
He is rightfully known for his inventiveness with English. But as the Independent noted in Dahl’s obituary a quarter-century ago, “The quality of his writing is easily discernible by the fluency with which it can be read aloud.”
See for yourself by reading the passage below out loud. A lesser writer would have crammed it with detail or been oblivious to its rhythm: