Editing Roald Dahl (section)

===Influences===
[[File:Dylan Thomas Writing Shed (7896662300).jpg|thumb|upright|Interior of [[Dylan Thomas]]'s writing shed; Dahl made a replica of it in his own garden in [[Great Missenden]], where he wrote many of his stories.|alt=Interior of Dylan Thomas's writing shed]]

A major part of Dahl's literary influences stemmed from his childhood. In his younger days, he was an avid reader, especially awed by fantastic tales of heroism and triumph. He met his idol, [[Beatrix Potter]], when he was six years old.<ref name="Potter"/> His other favourite authors included [[Rudyard Kipling]], [[Charles Dickens]], [[William Makepeace Thackeray]] and former Royal Navy officer [[Frederick Marryat]], and their works made a lasting mark on his life and writing.{{sfn|Craats|2014|p=1957}} He named Marryat's ''[[Mr Midshipman Easy]]'' as his favourite novel.<ref name="new words"/> Joe Sommerlad in ''[[The Independent]]'' writes, "Dahl's novels are often dark affairs, filled with cruelty, bereavement and [[Dickensian]] adults prone to gluttony and sadism. The author clearly felt compelled to warn his young readers about the evils of the world, taking the lesson from earlier fairy tales that they could stand hard truths and would be the stronger for hearing them."<ref name="Influences" />

Dahl was also influenced by [[Lewis Carroll]]'s ''[[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland]]''. The "Drink Me" episode in ''Alice'' inspired a scene in Dahl's ''George's Marvellous Medicine'' where a tyrannical grandmother drinks a potion and is blown up to the size of a farmhouse.<ref name="Influences" /> Finding too many distractions in his house, Dahl remembered the poet [[Dylan Thomas]] had found a peaceful shed to write in close to home. Dahl travelled to visit Thomas's hut in Carmarthenshire, Wales in the 1950s and, after taking a look inside, decided to make a replica of it to write in.<ref>{{cite news|title=How Dylan Thomas's writing shed inspired Roald Dahl|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-37342271|agency=BBC|date=18 September 2016|access-date=20 June 2018|archive-date=17 May 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190517141351/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-37342271|url-status=live}}</ref> Appearing on BBC Radio 4's ''[[Desert Island Discs]]'' in October 1979, Dahl named Thomas "the greatest poet of our time", and as one of his eight chosen records selected Thomas's reading of his poem "[[Fern Hill]]".<ref>{{cite news |title=Desert Island Discs: Roald Dahl |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p009mwxx |access-date=26 October 2023 |publisher=BBC |date=27 October 1979}}</ref>

Dahl liked ghost stories, and claimed that ''Trolls'' by [[Jonas Lie (writer)|Jonas Lie]] was one of the finest ghost stories ever written. While he was still a youngster, his mother, Sofie Dahl, related traditional Norwegian myths and legends from her native homeland to Dahl and his 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."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3559378/Roald-Dahl-young-tales-of-the-unexpected.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220110/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3559378/Roald-Dahl-young-tales-of-the-unexpected.html |archive-date=10 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=Roald Dahl: young tales of the unexpected|date=30 August 2008|work=The Daily Telegraph|access-date=16 September 2014}}{{cbignore}}</ref> When Dahl started writing and publishing his famous books for children, he included a grandmother character in ''The Witches'', and later said that she was based directly on his own mother as a tribute.<ref name="infloox" /><ref name="infloox-1" />