As a child, I'd devoured all of Dahl's books including this one, but its depth and underlying horror hadn't really registered with me as a nine-year-old. The book begins in 1938 when Dahl traveled to Africa to begin an adventure after his time at the Repton School. Because he got a job working for Shell Oil, Dahl set a course for Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. There, he certainly had an adventure. On one occasion, for example, Dahl purportedly witnessed a lion carrying a woman in his mouth

Going Solo - Penguin Books UK

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.' Round and round Athens we went, and I was so busy trying to prevent my starboard wing-tip from scraping against the plane next to me that this time I was in no mood to admire the grand view of the Parthenon or any of the other famous relics below me. Our formation was being led by Flight-Lieutenant Pat Pattle. Now Pat Pattle was a legend in the RAF. At least he was a legend around Egypt and the Western Desert and in the mountains of Greece. He was far and away the greatest fighter ace the Middle East was ever to see, with an astronomical number of victories to his credit. It was even said that he had shot down more planes than any of the famous and glamorized Battle of Britain aces, and this was probably true. I myself had never spoken to him and I am sure he hadn’t the faintest idea who I was. I wasn’t anybody. I was just a new face in a squadron whose pilots took very little notice of each other anyway. But I had observed the famous Flight-Lieutenant Pattle in the mess tent several times. He was a very small man and very soft-spoken, and he possessed the deeply wrinkled doleful face of a cat who knew that all nine of its lives had already been used up. As I have said, 17, 18 and 19 April seem to be all jumbled up together in my memory, and no single incident has remained vividly with me. But 20 April was quite different. I went up four separate times on 20 April, but it was the first of these sorties that I will never forget. It stands out like a sheet of flame in my memory. Going Solo is a book by Roald Dahl, first published by Jonathan Cape in London in 1986. It is a continuation of his autobiography describing his childhood, Boy and detailed his travel to Africa and exploits as a World War II pilot. As a young man working in East Africa for the Shell Company, Roald Dahl recounts his adventures living in the jungle and later flying a fighter plane in World War II.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. Very nearly as grotesque as his fiction. The same compulsive blend of wide-eyed innocence and fascination with danger and horror' Evening Standard

Roald Dahl | Going Solo | Slightly Foxed Magazine, Issue 64 Roald Dahl | Going Solo | Slightly Foxed Magazine, Issue 64

It is a fact, and I verified it carefully later, that out of those sixteen, no less than thirteen were killed in the air within the next two years 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. within the first 3rd of the book there was nudity on boats, a lion carrying a person, and a snake crawling into someone's house. Written by amoug us, Alfred rahardja, ian alvarez, Zhyon Johnson and other people who wish to remainanonymous It is a continuation of his autobiography describing his childhood, Boy and detailed his travel to Africa and exploits as a World War II pilot.

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Going Solo appeared towards the end of an extraordinarily fertile patch in his career when, with the support of his second wife, Felicity Crosland, and a collaborative editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Stephen Roxburgh, he wrote classics like The BFG and Matilda, with vivid illustrations by Quentin Blake. In 1938 Roald Dahl was fresh out of school and bound for his first job in Africa, hoping to find adventure far from home. However, he got far more excitement than he bargained for when the outbreak of the Second World War led him to join the RAF. His account of his experiences in Africa, crashing a plane in the Western Desert, rescue and recovery from his horrific injuries in Alexandria, flying a Hurricane as Greece fell to the Germans, and many other daring deeds, recreates a world as bizarre and unnerving as any he wrote about in his fiction. Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was born in Wales of Norwegian parents. He spent his childhood in England and, at age eighteen, went to work for the Shell Oil Company in Africa. When World War II broke out, he joined the Royal Air Force and became a fighter pilot. At the age of twenty-six he moved to Washington, D.C., and it was there he began to write. His first short story, which recounted his adventures in the war, was bought by The Saturday Evening Post, and so began a long and illustrious career. However, this book left me with a ton of unanswered questions. Like, what happened when he went home after the war? What did he do for work? How did he start writing, etc? I felt it was only an autobiography about a tiny bit of his life. It was probably the most tragic part of his life, but still only a little bit of it. It made me feel like there was still a lot missing or that there should have been another book after Going Solo.

Going Solo by Roald Dahl - Penguin Books Australia Going Solo by Roald Dahl - Penguin Books Australia

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. 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. 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. We’ve been doing some pretty intensive flying just lately – you may have heard about it a little on the wireless. [...] We’ve lost 4 pilots killed in the Squadron in the last 2 weeks, shot down by the French. Otherwise this country is great fun and definitely flowing with milk and honey …”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. It's getting 5 stars because my 2nd grade son LOVES, LOVES, LOVES it!!! The other night he got sent to bed with no read aloud (the little bastard lied to me about brushing his teeth, I know I'm such a hard ass) but he didn't even care!!! He just said "OK", grabbed his this book and happily trotted off to bed.