Undoubtedly the most famous Welshman of Norwegian extraction, Roald Dahl was born into a wealthy family of Cardiff ship owners. It was at the Cathedral School in Llandaff, he later recalled, that he developed a fascination with sweets that would later provide the inspiration for one of his most famous books.

Success as a writer was to come much later in life. After working as an oil salesman in Tanzania, he joined the RAF in Naorobi on the outbreak on the Second World War.

Badly injured when the plane he was piloting crashed in the North African desert he was sent to Washington as Air Attaché at the British Embassy. There he met

C.S. Forrester- of Hornblower fame- who was working on propaganda material. He asked Dahl to jot down some notes of his wartime experiences.

Impressed by the result, Forrester had the account published unedited. “Did you know you were a writer?” he asked Dahl. From that moment on, he was.

Most of Roald Dahl’s early work was written for adults. Over to You, a collection of short stories, was full of bizarre and often macabre plot twists. These and other stories were later dramatised in Tales of the Unexpected, a popular television series of the ‘seventies.

When he became a father, the telling of bedtime stories awakened his interest in writing for children. James and the Giant Peach first appeared in 1961 to rave reviews. A mildly surreal yet touching reworking of the Jack and The Beanstalk fable, it brought a highly original approach to children’s storytelling.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -the tale of a poor boy who wins a golden ticket to a lifetime"s supply of chocolate- was another huge hit and confirmed Dahl’s status as an international bestselling author.

Like all the great children’s writers he never talked down to his readers. He took them into fantastic but recognisable worlds where the forces of good will triumph though not before a good few scary episodes along the way.

Roald Dahl died in 1993, his popularity as a writer undiminished. In 2000 he was recognised in the city of birth when the Oval Basin in Cardiff Bay was renamed Roald Dahl Plas.