Going Solo

Product Information

And now you can listen to all of Roald Dahl's stories on audio, read by some very famous voices, including Kate Winslet, David Walliams and Steven Fry - plus there are added squelchy soundeffects from Pinewood Studios!

Going Solo by Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake | Waterstones Going Solo by Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake | Waterstones

Things start off merely bizarre: Dahl lying in his bunk on a ship when a figure of a man “naked as a jungle ape” runs past, soon joined by the figure of an equally nude woman. Transforming this imagery into full-scale realm of the macabre is that the two figures turn out to be a Major in the British military and his wife! From there, the story of Dahl’s sojourn in Africa first as an employee for Shell Oil and then as a member of the Royal Air Force becomes the very stuff of fiction. He witnesses what is later described as an event unparalleled in the history of all who heard about it: a woman being dragged away from a village clutched in the jaws of a lion who not only survived the experience, but walked away virtually unscathed.His first children's book was The Gremlins, about mischievous little creatures that were part of RAF folklore. The book was commissioned by Walt Disney for a film that was never made, and published in 1943. Dahl went on to create some of the best-loved children's stories of the 20th century, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and James and the Giant Peach.

Going Solo - Penguin Books UK

Like all the others, I was always sent up alone. I wished I could sometimes have had a friendly wing-tip alongside me, and more importantly, a second pair of eyes to help me watch the sky behind and above. But we didn’t have enough aircraft for luxuries of that sort. He eventually joined the war as a squadron pilot in the Royal Air Force, flying the Tiger Moth, Gloster Gladiator, and Hawker Hurricane. He was among the last Allied pilots to withdraw from Greece during the German invasion, taking part in the air for the Battle of Athens on 20 April 1941. In one of his accounts, he described a crash in the Western Desert, which fractured his skull and brought him several other problems such as temporarily being blinded during his days in Greece. [3] After the country fell to the Nazis, he went to the Middle East to fight Vichy French pilots after staying for a brief time in Alexandria, Egypt. Roald Dahl is now considered one of the most beloved storytellers of our time. Although he passed away in 1990, his popularity continues to increase as his fantastic novels, including James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The BFG, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, delight an ever-growing legion of fans.This love of flying recurs throughout Dahl’s work. It’s there in James and the Giant Peach or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Indeed, Dahl’s first foray into writing was an account of his crash in the Libyan desert early in his RAF career. It’s a story he told many times. In some versions he is shot down, but in Going Solo he is given the wrong co-ordinates of the base he is making for in North Africa and, with night closing in and running out of fuel, he is forced to make a crash landing in the desert.

Going Solo by Roald Dahl | Waterstones

Due to the presence of witches, gremlins, Oompa-Loompas and various assorted anthropomorphic animals—not to mention the cast of crazies that populate his short stories for a more mature audience— Roald Dahl is not usually viewed as one of those writers whose fiction is particularly informed by autobiography. Going Solo, the author’s memoir of his young adulthood spent in Africa, should be enough to call that view into question by any reader familiar with even his more imaginative short stories. That left us with twelve Hurricanes and twelve pilots with which to cover the whole of Greece from 19 April onwards. I don't feel like I have done enough after listening to him, but my life is my life. Like he says, we don't travel the same way we used to. Flying somewhere is not the same as a boat trip that stops at many ports. He did some crazy things in Africa as well. He was 6'6". He was huge.Each one of those sorties meant running across the airfield to wherever the Hurricane was parked (often 200 yards away), strapping in, starting up, taking off, flying to a particular area, engaging the enemy, getting home again, landing, reporting to the Ops Room and then making sure the aircraft was refuelled and rearmed immediately so as to be ready for another take-off. They did not think for one moment that they would find anything but a burnt-out fuselage and a charred skeleton, and they were astounded when they came upon my still-breathing body lying in the sand nearby.' Some people do not realize that although a Hurricane had eight guns in its wings, those guns were all immobile. You did not aim the guns, you aimed the plane. The guns themselves were carefully sighted and tested beforehand on the ground so that the bullets from each gun would converge at a point about 150 yards ahead. Thus, using your reflector-sight, you aimed the plane at the target and pressed the button. To aim accurately in this way requires skilful flying, especially as you are usually in a steep turn and going very fast when the moment comes. His flying lessons and time as a fighter pilot, in the doomed and ill-advised British effort to defend Greece. Dahl learned on the job and survived. Most of his comrades-in-arms didn't. The pitifully small British air detachment was largely destroyed. What I summed up in a few lines actually occupies most of the book and is some of the most terrifying, most haunting, most comic, and most light-hearted war memoirs I've ever read. Only Roald Dahl can write about war, airplanes crashing, oil tankers being bombed, people burned alive and lives lost, and STILL fit charm and humor in it.