"Roald Dahl was born in Wales in 1916 and educated in English boarding schools. During World War II, he was a Royal Air Force fighter pilot in North Africa and Greece. He was transferred to Washington D.C., where he saw his first piece of work published, ?A Piece of Cake,? an account of a fighter plane crashing in Libya. Soon after he published his first piece of fiction, a story called ?The Gremlins.? Fifteen years later, Mr. Dahl found himself telling bedtime stories to his children over and over again. These stories became the basis for James and the Giant Peach. After that came Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, and Matilda. Every book of Roald Dahl?s was written in a little brick hut in an apple orchard about two hundred yards away from his home. He wrote them all in pencil. More can be learned about Roald Dahl by reading the autobiographical Boy: Tales of Childhood and Going Solo. Roald Dahl died in 1990 at the age of seventy-four."