The Secret World of Roald Dahl - Lady MacRobert's Reply

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

When tragedy strikes his family, Dahl is forced into a waking nightmare that transforms him from a struggling writer into an unlikely medical pioneer. In the process, he ends up saving the lives of thousands of children around the world. But just as one crisis ends, another begins, followed by several more in brutal succession. Yet somehow, out of this unimaginable darkness, something hopeful emerges.    Follow "The Secret World of Roald Dahl": Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretworldpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SecretWorldPod/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@secretworldpod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SecretWorldPod X: https://x.com/SecretWorld_Pod See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hello, gorgeous. It's Lala Kent. Host of Untraditionally Lala. My days of filling up cups at sir may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley. Live on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes, but over here on my podcast, Untraditionally Lala,

I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate. It's unruly, it's unruly, unafraid, it's untraditionally Lala. Listen to Untraditionally Lala on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you. get your podcast. Most people out here think that taking care of one another is important. And most people would step up for a neighbor going through a tough time. Most people around here help out friends and family when they need it. But the funny thing is, most of us won't look for help when we need it.

Talk to someone if you're struggling with mental health because most people out here really care. Find more information at loveyourmindtay.org. That's loveyourmindtay.org. Brought to you by the Hunsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council. Now everybody over here? Oh, it's one of my other favorite places. The Twilight Gazebo. Sunset Gardens. Twilight gazebo.

What's next? Dead man's grove? Mom, could you please try to be a little bit positive about this? From Kenya Barris, the visionary creator of Blackish, comes Big Age, an audible original about finding your way in life's next chapter. This audio comedy series follows a retired couple's reluctant relocation to Sunset Gardens, a Floridian senior community that is anything but relaxing. Starring Comedy Legends Jennifer Lewis, Cedric the Entertainer, and Nisi Nashvettes.

Through its blend of outrageous comedy, key party anyone, and touching revelations, big age explores what it means to grow older without growing old at heart. Go to audible.com slash big age series to start listening today. I'm Kristen Davis. host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? In 1998, my life was forever changed when I took on the role of Charlotte York on a new show called Sex and the City. Now I get to sit down with some of my favorite people and relive all of the incredible

moments this show brought us on and off the screen. Listen to Are You a Charlotte on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Before we start the episode, one production note. In this episode, we have a lot of quotes from Roald Dahl from his interviews with Barry Farrell. Rather than just have me read them in my terrible British accent, we decided to bring them to life.

So we use an actor's performance and some custom software to create a doll-like voice. Okay, now on to the episode. We've heard a lot about Roald Dahl so far. His days as a fighter pilot, his work as a spy with the Irregulars, his screenwriting in Hollywood. What if I told you that on his way

to becoming the most successful children's office, ever, Dahl took a quick little detour to become a world-class neuroscientist? At this point in the season, I feel like you might actually believe me, as you should. Here's Tom Solomon, a doctor who knew Dahl speaking on Liverpool TV. In his life, he did some amazing medical things. He actually invented a new neurosurgical device to treat water on the brain, to treat hydrocephalus. And the treatments went very good. So he invented a new one. And it was used around the world, thousands of children benefited. Okay, then. Roll Dahl,

the neuroscience engineer. I promise, it's an even crazier story than that doctor just alluded to. But in order to really understand why it was necessary for him to become an expert in the brain, I got to tell you about Dahl's kids. Of all the masks that Dahl tries on, this is going to be his

most challenging. Doting Father. For my heart podcast, Imagine Entertainment, and Parallax. I'm Aaron Tracy, and this is the secret world of of Roll Doll. Episode 5.

I didn't become a father until after my career had sort of found its footing, until I had some stability, which took a while because, you know, I'm a writer. But when Doll becomes a dad, he's still trying to figure out his career, figure out what kind of writer he is. He hasn't found his voice yet. He's still attempting adult fiction

in the vein of his heroes like Hemingway, Graham Green, and C.S. Forrester. In other words, he's writing this muscular macho prose focused on action. His stories at this time are also filled with the pretty explicit sexual adventures of his heroes. If you've never read these stories and only know Dahl from his kids' books, you will be shocked. Start with my uncle Oswald. It is raunchy. But here's what I'm getting at. It takes Dahl going on the insane

journey with his family that you're about to hear for him to figure out who his natural audience is and what kind of writer he is. In 1960, Dahl and Neil welcomed their third child, Theo, their only son, With two daughters already at home, Olivia and Tessa, Dahl is thrilled to finally have a boy. According to writer Nadia Cohen, Dahl writes pretty graphically about his excitement over the baby's boy parts that I'm not going to subject you to here. I'll just say he compares it to an exotic flower glowing with promise

and leaving it at that. Dahl immediately feels a special kinship with Theo, the only boy in a family of sisters, just like Dahl had been. Six weeks after Theo's birth, the family moves to New York. for the winter. Dahl explains what happens next to Barry Farrell, a journalist who I'll come back to a bunch because he practically moves in with the family during this period. Feral writes an entire book about what he witnesses. I think Farrell was originally just hoping to write a cozy Sunday

profile, but ended up becoming embedded with the dolls like a war correspondent in a combat zone. So, the family is living in New York. Dahl is struggling to write his short stories, while his wife, Pat Neal, is on a break from shooting Breakfast of Tiffany's. Dahl tells Farrell what happens next. It was December 5th, 1960. We had a nurse then, Susan, and Susan had Theo in his pram on their way to pick up Olivia from her nursery school. Two blocks from home.

And a cab shot past and took the pram right out of Susan's hands. Susan dashed across after it. The plan had flown 40 feet through the air and into the side of a boss. Theo was just four months old. Tessa, three years old, is left standing alone on the sidewalk as Susan rushes into the street.

The police are there within minutes and they rush them all to the hospital. Neil is only a few blocks away when the accident happens. She hears the sirens pass, but she has no idea they're for her infant son. When she walks into their apartment, the telephone is already ringing. As soon as she receives the news,

she hangs up and calls doll at his office. She doesn't have the full story yet, doesn't sound overly alarmed. Theo's been hurt, she tells him. They say not too seriously. We have to go to the hospital. Dahl throws on a coat and gets ready to leave, but before he can get out of the door,

Susan calls from the hospital, hysterical, saying, hurry, hurry. So, then I knew it was bad, Dahl says. Theo is an emergency when we get there, dog continues. They x-ray him and find lots of fractures. Very critical shape, they say. In her memoir, Neil goes even further, writing that the doctor pulled them aside after examining Theo. He told them, we are doing everything we can, but he is going to die. From that moment on, Neil essentially moves into the hospital, living off stale coffee, sleeping in a chair beside her son's

bed, obsessed with the rhythms of his labored breathing. When he sleeps, which is a lot of the time, Neil climbs two flights of stairs on unsteady legs to another kind of visual. In an upstairs room at this very same hospital is her old friend, the playwright Lillian Hellman, who's keeping watch over Dashiel Hammett, the famous detective novelist, and her longtime romantic partner. He's dying of lung cancer. It's a really cruel symmetry. You might remember Helman played matchmaker for Doll and Neil by throwing that dinner party years ago. That was the bright beginning of something, in a beautiful setting filled with brilliant writers and celebrities.

Now the two women are together again, in the opposite of that glamorous setting. No more fancy dresses, no makeup, just trapped in a sterile Manhattan tower, terrified and grieving. But back to Dahl. He tells Farrell about the dreadful special nurses that kept getting called in to Theo's room. One of these nurses walks right in, and before even attending to Theo, she shows Dahl and Neal a newspaper clipping about the accident and says how thrilled she is to be assigned this case. This is something Dahl and Neil are going to have to get used to, unfortunately. Neil is a world-famous movie star. Her son, being in an accident like this, is huge international news. And some of the nurses seem much more interested in getting Neil's autograph than in paying attention to her son.

They seem downright distracted. One afternoon, Dahl observes a nurse giving Theo a dose of an anti-convulsant. And she's giving him a ton of it, Dahl says. Isn't that rather a lot, he asked her? No. Half an ounce like it's supposed to be, she replies calmly. Well, it was supposed to be a tenth of a gram, Dahl later explains, a hell of a lot less. Doctors rush in and start to pump the stomach of this poor four-month-old baby.

After the nurse's mistake, despite the comfort of having helmet and Hammett right upstairs, the dolls decide to get the hell out of this hospital. So they wrap the one blankets, pick them up in their arms, and just carry them out. All the doctors are standing around, looking very worried and protesting, Dahl says, but their minds are made up. To make matters worse, it's a crazy snow day in New York. But then, Neil's longtime agent, Harvey Orkin, suddenly materializes with a car. Dahl continues.

It was snowing like hell, and we were desperate. But then Harvey suddenly materialized with a car, and he drove very fast and very skillfully through the blizzard, with cars skidding at odd angles all around us. I'd not forgotten that ride, because he was Harvey, an unhappy-ish chap, a wise, cracky fellow. A person I wasn't so keen on and who doubtlessly wasn't so fond of me,

yet there was Harvey, still the sort of friend who would drive through the snow for you in an emergency. I love this, Deziel. Loyal is such an important theme in Doll's work. Think of Matilda and Miss Honey, Sophie and the BFG,

Charlie and Grandpa Joe. You can just feel how much it means to Doll that this guy, this agent, who's not even a close friend, has nevertheless shown up in a snowman, storm to save them. Harvey drives them to Presbyterian Hospital. I know it well. It's where I had both of my kids. Here, the doctors evaluate Theo and operate on him for a subdermal hematoma, which is a kind of swelling caused by bleeding into the brain. And they put it right, Dahl says, a huge, huge relief.

Still, Theo will stay in the hospital inside an oxygen tent for the next two weeks. It's a terrible period. Theo goes temporarily blind from cerebrospinal fluid accumulating around his brain. which requires another operation. Remember, he's only four months old. Each operation is incredibly dangerous. Neil somehow stays relatively calm through it all. She has a kind of strength you could only step back from and admire. Dahl later gushes about his wife.

This is Saigon, the story of my family and of the country that shaped us. The United States will not stand by and allow any power, however great, take over another country. From My Heart Podcasts, Saigon. Allow me to introduce Joseph Sherman. You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam? I should stop talking so much. I like hearing you talk. One city, a divided country, and the war that tore America apart.

This is for Vietnam. I've taken a hit from Japanese ground fire. Do you rate me? They're pouring petrol all over him. He's holding matches. I'm on a landmine. For free time. Let's get out.

Freedom from Vietnam. Run! Saigon. starring Kelly Marie Tran and Rob Benedict. Sting here's madness. The world should hear about this. There's a fire coming to this country and it's going to burn out everything. Listen to Saigon on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello, gorgeous, it's Lala Kent, host of Untraditionally Lala. My days of filling up Cupsett Sir may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley. Live on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes, but over here on my podcast. podcast, Untraditionally Lala, I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate. I've been full on over sharing with fans, family, and former frenemies like Tom Schwartz. I had a little bone to pick with Schwarzy when he came on the pod. You don't feel bad that you told me I was a bootleg housewife? I almost flipped a pizza in your lap.

Oh my God, I literally forgot about that until just now. Sorry, I don't want to blame alcohol. I got to blame that one on the alcohol. This is about laughing and learning when life just keeps on life in. because I make mistakes so that you guys don't have to. We're growing, we're thriving, and yes, sometimes we're barely surviving, but we do it all with love. It's unruly, it's unruly, it's unafraid, it's Untraditionally Lala. Listen to Untraditionally Lala on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Most people out here think that taking care of one another is important. And most people would step up for a neighbor going through a tough time. Most people around here help out friends and family when they need it. But the funny thing is, most of us won't look for help when we need it. Talk to someone if you're struggling with mental health. Because most people out here really care. Find more information at loveyourmindtay.org. That's loveyourmindtay.org.

Brought to you by the Huntsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council. Now everybody over here? Oh, it's one of my other favorite places. The Twilight Gazebo. Sunset Gardens, Twilight Gazebo. What's next? Dead Man's Grove? Mom, could you please try to be a little bit positive about this?

From Kenya Barris, the visionary creator of Blackish, comes Big Age, an audible original about finding your way in life's next chapter. This audio comedy series follows a retired couple's reluctant relocation to Sunset Gardens, a Floridian senior community that is anything but relaxing. Starring Comedy Legends Jennifer Lewis, Cedric the Entertainer, and Nisi Nashvettes. Through its blend of outrageous comedy, key party anyone, and touching revelations, big age explores what it means to grow older without growing old at heart. Go to audible.com slash big age series to start listening today.

Theo finally gets released from the hospital right before Christmas. He goes home, but he's a bunch of terrifying setbacks, according to Denison, including a buildup of cerebral spinal fluid pressing on the brain that renders him silent, unseen, unmoving. Every time there's this buildup of fluid, they have to be a buildup of fluid, they have to hurry him back to the hospital for the fluid to be drained. And of course, this puts Theo at risk of blindness, brain damage, and death. Doctors try to prevent further fluid build up with a drainage tube,

but the tube keeps getting blocked, making another operation necessary. And with every operation, the stakes are raised, and the chances lessen of restoring Theo's sight and brain function. Neil says whenever they take Theo back in for surgery, he looks up at us with those huge, desolate, bewildered eyes that ask, why are you doing this to me again? Theo has eight operations in 30 months, all before he's three years old,

and it's almost all due to the inability of this tube to work. I think in a lot of partnerships, when one person becomes pessimistic or feels defeated about something, the other person just naturally becomes more optimistic and upbeat. I've definitely experienced this over the years in writing partnerships. While Neil may be showing a ton of strength around Theo, she's genuinely not sure if he's going to make it through all this. So Dahl takes the opposite outlook.

According to Denson again, Dahl sets aside any assumption that Theo will die. He just puts it out of his mind and sets out to find a way to save him. Dahl's sole focus becomes this tube that keeps failing. He writes, I couldn't believe that with everything science had come up with, they couldn't produce one little clog-proof tube.

That little clog-proof tube becomes his life's mission. But what the hell does a writer know about medical tubes? Without any medical expertise to draw on, Dahl relies on his creativity instead. But where to begin? His first call is to Dr. Kenneth Till, a pediatric neurosurgeon who's been in charge of Theo at the hospital. Till can help with the science, but they need someone else too, someone who can help with the design. In a very inspired, very creative, very Dahlian move, Dahl decides to call a toy maker he knows, Stanley Wade. Dahl had once bought model airplanes from Wade for his nephew, and he raised.

remembers how ingenious Wade was with tiny instruments. Together, the three of them, Dahl, Till, and Wade spend hours in Dahl's living room, brainstorming ideas. It's not that different from the Writers' Room in L.A., where Walt Disney first taught Dahl how to collaborate years ago. They throw ideas on the board, rejecting ones that don't work, and building on those that do. They take breaks to play pool, they snack, they laugh, they pour coffee down their throats by the gallon. In hindsight, what they come up with seems so obvious, but no one had done it for. For instance, until that moment, all of these tubes were made of plastic, which was expensive and hard to sterilize. Dahl and his two partners swapped out the plastic for stainless steel,

which made the device more durable and also way easier to disinfect and prevent infections. They also changed the design slightly to give the tube a bigger surface area, which prevented fluid from flowing back into the brain and creating blockage. Again, sounds obvious, but no one had ever come up with a design that reduced the risk of blockage before. I don't know if it's the special alchemy of these three specific men with their very different skill sets, or the urgency Dahl feels to get this done quickly to save his son. But together, Dahl, Till, and Wade come up with a better tube than has ever existed. Can I just stop for a second here to say, oh my God.

With absolutely no training, Dahl wills himself to come up with this breakthrough device in order to save Theo, his only son. Is that not the greatest thing you've ever heard? His poor infant son is dying. Nothing is working. and instead of just throwing his hands up, he literally invents the solution. It takes two years for them to build it,

which is roughly 40,000 years fewer than it would have taken me. The Wade-Dall-Till valve, named for its three innovators, is so successful that it soon gets manufactured globally. Doll insists they not make a profit on it in order to be able to distribute it cheaply. According to the National Library of Medicine at NIH, the device is estimated to have been used in 2,000 to 3,000 children worldwide

in the two years after they came up with it. It's especially useful in developing nations where medical devices like this mean the difference between life and death. Not to take a soft topic, but a quick aside just to say that I did a bunch of research around this and the only similar example I found of anything like this ever happening, a breakthrough medical device getting created by someone without medical training, is exactly one year later.

A guy named Paul Winchell, a TV actor who appeared in lots of sitcoms like the Brady Bunch and the Beverly Hillbillies and was the original voice of Tigger in Winnie DePoo, he co-creates the first artificial heart. I have nothing more to say about that, except what the hell was happening in the 60s? For Dahl, creating the tube is another incredible feat in a life full of them.

I think each of these accomplishments was only possible because of the one that came before. They all built on each other. When Dahl was recruited into the regulars in his 20s, without any espionage training, he didn't know what he was doing, but in a matter of months, he was hanging out with Franklin

and Eleanor Roosevelt. When he decided to write movies, he was completely clueless, but soon he was on top of Hollywood, working with Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock. When you go through life like that, with no apparent ceiling to what's possible, with life constantly reinforcing your crazy ambitions, you must start to feel like nothing is out of reach.

So when no device exists to help cure your infant son, you don't go to church and pray, you call a doctor and a toy maker, you know, and say, let's get to work. Dahl, of course, later puts all. all of this into his writing. The lead character in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is partly based on the toy maker, Wade. And Willie Wonka has parts of all three men, an innovating scientist, a creative genius,

a toy-making savant. But instead of torturing children like Wonka does, doll and his buddies build a device to save them. Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple. That's 105%. That's, of course, a line from Willy Wonka in the Chalkoad Factory. But Dahl isn't yet ready to write that.

He's still a few years away from dreaming Wonka up. He's still writing for the wrong audience, namely, adults. And it's not going well. Doll's creative frustration start bleeding into his home life, adding strain to a family already fractured by Theo's accident. But if he thinks the pressures are intense right now, they're nothing compared to what's lying right around the corner.

Dahl and Neal's second oldest daughter, Tessa, sums up what's about to happen well when she says theirs was a family that, quote, toppled unwittingly over the edge of a jagged cliff face into a canyon of darkness, which was filled with such sadness, such total devastation, that we would never recover. Yeah, get ready. This is Saigon, the story of my family and of the country that shaped us. The United States will not stand by and allow any power, however great. Take over another country. From My Heart Podcasts, Saigon.

Please allow me to introduce Joseph Sherman. You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam? I should stop talking so much. I like hearing you talk. One city, a divided country, and the war that tore America apart. This is for Vietnam. I've taken a hit from Japanese ground fire. Deuterate me.

They're pouring petrol all over him. He's holding matches. I'm on a landmine. Or freeze on. Let's get out. Freedom for me. Saigon, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Rob Benedict. Sting here's madness.

The world should hear about this. There's a fire coming to this country, and it's going to burn out everything. Listen to Saigon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, gorgeous, it's Lala Kent, host of Untraditionally Lala. My days of filling up cups at Sir may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley. Life on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes, but over here on my podcast, Untraditionally Lala, I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate.

I've been full on over sharing with fans, family, and former frenemies like Tom Schwartz. I had a little bone to pick with Schwarzy when he came on the pod. You don't feel bad that you told me I was a bootleg housewife? I almost flipped a pizza in your lap. Oh my God, I literally forgot about that until just now. Sorry, I don't want to blame alcohol. I got to blame that one in the alcohol.

This is about laughing and learning when life just keeps on life in. Because I make mistakes so that you guys don't have to. We're growing, we're thriving, and yes, sometimes we're barely surviving, but we do it all with love. It's unruly, it's unafraid, it's untraditionally la la. Listen to untraditionally la la la on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Most people out here think that taking care of one another is important. And most people would step up for a neighbor going through a tough time. Most people around here help out friends and family when they need it.

But the funny thing is, most of us won't look for help when we need it. Talk to someone if you're struggling with mental health. Because most people out here really care. Find more information at loveyourmindtay.org. That's loveyourmindtay.org. Brought to you by the Huntsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council. Now everybody over here? Oh, it's one of my other favorite places.

The Twilight Gazebo. Sunset Gardens. Twilight gazebo. What's next? Dead Man's Grove? Mom, could you please try to be a little bit positive about this? From Kenya Barris, the visionary creator of Blackish, comes Big Age, an audible original about finding your way in life's next chapter. This audio comedy series follows a retired couple's reluctant relocation to Sunset Gardens, a Floridian senior community that is anything but relaxing. Starring Comedy Legends, Jennifer

Louis, Cedric the Entertainer, and Nisi Nashvettes. Through its blend of outrageous comedy, key party anyone, and touching revelations, big age explores what it means to grow older without growing old at heart. Go to audible.com slash big age series to start listening today. Olivia is Dahl and Neil's firstborn. It's now November, 1962. A little less than two years after Theo's accident. The family has left New York and is living in England now. Olivia comes home with a note from the headmistress of her elementary school, warning of a measles outbreak. She's seven years old.

Dahl and Neil's first thought, of course, is about Theo. After what he's been through, they can't risk him getting the virus under any circumstances. Vaccines against the disease are still pretty uncommon in this era, and doses are in limited supply. But pulling some strings, Neil is able to obtain the vaccine for Theo, which means Olivia, who's perfectly healthy, doesn't get any protection. And of course, Olivia contracts measles. It doesn't seem like a terrible case at first.

But here's Dahl on what happens next. One morning when Olivia was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed. I'm showing how to fashion little animals out of colored pipe cleaners. And when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers in her mind were not working together. And she couldn't do anything. Are you feeling all right? I asked her.

I feel all sleepy, she said. In an hour, she was unconscious. And in 12 hours, she was dead. In such a cruel mirror to his own childhood, Olivia is seven when she dies. The same age Dahl's older sister Astry was when she died. The defining moment of Dahl's childhood repeated again in his adulthood. In Dahl's memoir, boy, he writes about Astry.

She was far and away my father's favorite, he says. He adored her beyond measure, and her sudden death left him literally speechless for days afterwards. Dahl's father was so overwhelmed with grief that when he himself went down in pneumonia, a few weeks after Astri died, he didn't care whether or not he survived, Dahl writes. A patient had to fight to survive.

My father refused to fight. He was thinking, I am quite sure, of his beloved daughter, and he was wanting to join her in heaven. So he died too. He was 57 years old. My mother had now lost a daughter and a husband all in the space of a few weeks.

Heaven knows what it must have felt like to be hit with a double catastrophe like this, doll finishes. Which is such a strange turn of phrase because, of course, Dahl was hit with it too. He was three years old. So, the big question right now for Dahl, can he be stronger than his father was?

He genuinely doesn't know the answer. He becomes lost. He begins drinking more and taking more pain killers for his old back injury from the plane crash. It happened so swiftly that one didn't have time to prepare for it, Dahl writes. I was in a kind of days, I suppose, and morbid thoughts kept after me. That kind of thought can run you down, you know, worrying about fate and the meaning of things. I couldn't do any writing. And that went on for about a year and a half.

According to Denson, Dahl's only recourse is to try to figure out exactly what happened to Olivia. Maybe he can invent something that will help others in the same situation, like the medical tube he made for Theo. He remembers that Olivia, strangely, hadn't had a reaction to her smallpox vaccinations years before, meaning she seemed naturally immune to that disease. Huh, maybe there was a connection between that and her measles reaction.

He begins writing letters to specialists around the globe. He is desperate for answers. Dahl tells Barry Farrell. I got the idea that there must be some way of finding out in advance if a child is susceptible to this. I wanted to set up a careful investigation, and I was prepared to get in touch with every parent of every child in this country who had had severe complications from measles. I thought of drawing up a questionnaire and correlating the answers, but by then the inoculation against measles had become more common in England,

so the problem had been very largely erased. Still, Dahl seems hellbends on blaming himself for Olivia's death. After Theo's accident on the Upper East Side, Dahl and Neil had decided to get the hell out of Manhattan. Normally, we would have been in New York in November, but after the accident, we said, let's get out of this place where children are hit by taxi cabs, and we moved our permanent household to England. Of course, Olivia wouldn't have died if we had stayed in New York.

They had the inoculations there. But here in England, they weren't available them. Neil's strategy to deal with all this grief is through religion. finding solace in her southern Protestant upbringing. But Dahl is dismissive of nearly all religious beliefs, comparing them to superstition. I don't have those feelings at all, he writes, though he does confess to having moments of wondering how so much misfortune could befall one family. But Dahl doesn't see it as a curse, or, as he puts it, a doom coming down on us.

He just thought, how odd, I don't think I'm capable of taking it beyond that. Superstition is something one grows out of. You try avoiding all the cracks in the pavement, or you touch all the posts in the fence. But then you find out later that it doesn't help. You find out that it's not going to make a bit of difference if you step on the cracks or not. I think I just realize subconsciously that if you start thinking about bad luck, you're starting to weaken. The great thing is to keep going. Whatever happens, Dahl finishes.

So, unlike his father, Dahl decides to live. He becomes the embodiment of that famous Samuel Beckett phrase. You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on. Tessa, meanwhile, needs her parents' help too. This poor girl, she watched her brother's accident from the sidewalk, and now her older sister is dead. She's understandably struggling.

The dolls take her to see Anna Freud, a pioneering psychoanalyst, and the youngest daughter of Sigmund. Anna suggests family therapy for the dolls, but Roald refuses. His writing still isn't going well, and he doesn't want to take any chances of losing his edge. He says he's seen too many writers who could never create anymore after they had all their nooks and crannies flattened like pancakes. No therapy for him. But Dal does need to find something, something that will give his life meaning again. He tells Barry Farrell that there was something that had a huge influence on him during the war. It was called McRoberts' reply.

Lady McRoberts was a fine Scottish woman with a manor house, and she had three sons, all in the RAF, all pilots, and all of them killed one after the other in 1941. One. Lady McRabert, upon hearing this news, gave a tremendous sum of money to pay for the cost of a sterling bomber. And when that plane was built, she had painted on it. Lady McRawberts reply. I can remember being moved by that. It was something really dauntless. You simply cannot defeat such people. Dahl comes up with his own version of this. He dedicates his masterpiece, the BFG, to Olivia. The book was inspired by a story he would tell Olivia at night while she fell asleep.

Now millions of other children benefit from it. It's not exactly a sterling bomber to avenge his child's death, but it is his own defiant reply to loss, transforming grief into wonder. Ensuring that while one little girl's laughter was silenced, countless others will echo, thanks to the pages he writes in her memory. Okay, it's 1965 now.

Dahl has lost a daughter. He has a son who's in and out of the hospital. His writing is not going well. He still hasn't found his voice or his audience. But at least he's got his wife, right? Again, hold on tight. Just a few years after Olivia's death, Neil lands a huge acting job.

It's the lead in a studio film being directed by one of Hollywood's all-time legends, four-time best director winner, John Ford. Back in the 60s, Orson Wells, was interviewed, and one of the questions he was asked who his favorite American directors were. He said, well, I prefer the old man. By which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.

That was director Peter Bogdanovich from a documentary called Directed by John Ford. The movie Ford wants Patricia Neil to star in will be his final film. He's retiring, even though he's less than a decade removed from some of his best work, like The Searchers and the man who shot Liberty Valance. Neil is ecstatic to work with Ford, and it's maybe the only gig she would have said yes to right now, because in addition to everything else going on with her family, she's just discovered she's three months pregnant.

Neil brings doll and the kids out to L.A. for the shoot. She's hoping, praying it'll be a comforting change of scenery for the grieving family. Neil arranges for all of them to stay in director Martin Ritt's house. Years earlier, Ritt directed Neil to an Oscar in HUD. By this point, his career has been derailed by the Hollywood Blacklist for being a suspected communist. One look at his crazy mansion of the Palisades, though, and you know this guy isn't totally opposed to capitalism.

Ritt and his family are abroad, so Neil, Dahl, and the kids have it all to themselves. When they arrive in L.A., it's February. Neil begins filming. Four days into the shoot, she has the afternoon off. She comes home to give Tessa a bath. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Neil feels a searing headache come on. Headache isn't even the right word.

It's like a knife in her skull, she later writes. She collapses to the floor next to the bathtub. Doll happens to be in the bedroom. So he hears the thud and comes rushing in. He finds Neil unconscious. He quickly pulls Portessa out of the tub. She's crying her eyes out, looking at her mom unconscious on the floor. Doll's panic only lasts a moment.

He's been here before. Almost an autopilot, doll flies into action. He's ready for this. Theo and Olivia have prepared him. First, he calls an ambulance. Then quickly calls Dr. Charles Carton, a neurosurgeon who consulted on Theo. It's kind of an amazing twist of fate. Only because of Theo's accident,

does Dahl have the home phone number of one of the best neurosurgeons in the world. Thanks to Dahl's quick thinking, they're at UCLA Medical Center within 20 minutes of Neil falling in the bathroom. Dr. Carton arrives at the same time they do. He instantly takes charge, ordering tests and x-rays.

Lead aprons are placed over Neil's belly to protect the unborn child. Later, a TV movie will be made about all this. I'm afraid it's what I suspect it. Here's the moment from the first. It's an interranial hemorrhage, a stroke. If you had another hemorrhage just now, which is your third, happened while we were ex-raying.

In the same place? Yes. Yes, and I know, unfortunately, you're familiar with the brain because of Theo's accident in New York. Another emergency involving the brain. It's almost too hard to believe. First, in his 20s, Dahl had brain damage from his plane crash in the war.

Later, his mentor, Charles Marsh, died from brain inflammation from a mosquito bite. Then Theo got a brain injury from being hit by a taxi. Olivia died from brain inflammation from the measles, and now Neil has had a brain aneurysm. What on earth? Dr. Carton bluntly tells Doll not to be optimistic. Without surgery, Neil will definitely die.

But she's unlikely to survive the surgery. And if she does survive, she'll have severe complications for the rest of her life. Dahl has to decide what to do. He tells the doctor to do the surgery. So Carton and six other doctors operate on Neil for the next seven hours. They cut a four-by-six trap door in her head to remove the blood clots in her brain. After the seven hours, the surgery is successful, which is sort of shocking, even to the doctors. Neil will live, but they're sure she'll never be herself again.

Here's Dahl, recounting it all, to BBC One Legend, Michael Park. I said to Charlie Carton, the surgeon, I said, well, she's going to live now, isn't she? And he said, yes, she is, but I'm not sure I've done you a favor, you see, which is the right thing to say, isn't it? Because the odds are it's a vegetable. Really? Oh, yes, with that kind of brain damage. It really shakes me up when Dahl says, it's a vegetable, as if he has to emotionally distance

himself from her by making her an object. The family does its best to keep a low. profile during this impossible time. But Neil is only two years removed from winning best actress. She's one of the most famous movie stars in the world at the height of her powers. And then, on February 22nd, Variety runs a story with the banner headline, film actress Patricia Neal dies at 39. Only problem is, she's not dead. Reporters, fans, and photographers swarm the hospital. For the 10 days after the surgery, Neil remained. in a coma. Dahl has to just sit and wait to find out what his wife will be like when she wakes up.

But over that week and a half, he makes a decision. He decides it doesn't matter what her abilities are when she wakes up. He's going to will her back to her old self, no matter what. For all of Dahl's character faults, he's an amazing caretaker in times of crisis. During her coma, Dahl remains at his wife's bedside all day, every day, leaving only to eat, see the kids, or catch a few hours of sleep. And when she wakes up, his work begins. He's determined to get his children their mother back. It's hard not to imagine that this is what doll wishes his mother had done for his father when he was three years old.

If his mother had had doll's forceful nature, his stubbornness, his arrogance, might she have forced his dad to beat his pneumonia and depression and live so the doll could have grown up with a father? Neil remains in the hospital for over a month, a few days longer than Theo's stay. In the beginning, she can barely speak. and she doesn't seem to remember words or names or events. But Dahl won't permit that to last. It's his new version of creating Theo's tube.

He's going to fix Neil himself. As Denison writes, that Pat should recover and recover fully became Rold's obsessive concern. More than any doctor, nurse, or therapist, Roald dominated the steps of Pat's recovery. When Dahl finally takes his wife home, her right leg is in a brace,

and she has a patch over one eye. He quickly hires a nurse, a physiotherapist and a speech therapist. Doctors warn him that more than an hour per day of therapy is too much for Neil. But with no formal medical or therapeutic training himself, just an unshakable belief that he knows what's right, Dahl rejects their advice and creates a rigorous schedule for his wife, all day, every day.

Their friends who visit are shocked at Dahl's militaristic attitude. He seems to be torturing Neil. He becomes unrelenting, forcing her to do speech therapy five hours a day. The only thing that keeps Neil going is looking at Theo, seeing how well he's doing, which convinces her of the brain's ability to heal itself. But of course, it's still an impossible struggle for Neil. She can barely speak or move. She has no agency.

She cries all the time. As her speech comes back and fits and starts, she blows up at all constantly. And she asks Barry Farrell, the journalist who's covering all this and who's become one of her best friends, how to commit suicide. Farrell, who's just 30, is totally freaked out by this world-famous actress asking him these questions. He doesn't know whether he should tell doll or not. It turned out not to matter, because one night at dinner, Farrell explains, Pat mentions suicide in front of Roald and some guests, making her usual joke about not knowing how. She had drunk a bit too much wine, and the laughter that spilled out of her as she spoke sounded wild and demented.

Well, if that's all that's stopping you, your problems are solved, doll tells her in front of everyone. we've got knives in the kitchen that will do you up fine, and there are my razor blades upstairs, or else you can lock yourself in the car and turn on the engine, and before you know it, Bob's your uncle. Nothing to it. Making a joke of it is, of course, Dahl's way to cope. And then he finds another way, turning it into his fiction.

Here's Dahl, explaining to Michael Parkinson again. When she started to pick up words, she made them up. I made a whole list of them once, and I don't know where they are. She used to once say, you drive me crazy. She used to say, you've drank my diables. It's a splendid phrase, you know. She used to call it a dry martini, a red screwdriver. Dahl is taking notes on all of his wife's funny, strange turns of phrase,

and is going to put them into the mouth of the BFG. If you haven't read that book in a while, here's a typical speech by the Giant from Stephen Spielberg's adaptation. And then there would be a great rumple dumpers, wouldn't they? And all the human beings would be rummaging and whiffling for the giant what you saw and getting wildly excited, and then they'd be locking me up in a cage to be looked at with all the squiggling, you know, hippo dumplings and crocodile dillies and jiggie raves. And then there would be a gigantic, lus-luxy giant hunt for all of the boys. I won't tell.

That very unique speech pattern is part of what makes the BFG one of the most indelible characters ever put to print. and it comes right out of his wife's stroke. On the one hand, it's not Dahl's most attractive trait to poke fun at his ill wife's limitations. On the other, turning what must have been intense private pain into his art is what all great artists have always done. It just comes off a little more comical in Dahl's case.

But he does make the BFG's wordplay sympathetic at least, like when he has him say, please understand that I cannot be helping it if I sometimes is saying things a little squiggly, words is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me. For Neil, of course, it was much more terrifying than funny. Here she is years later on Fresh Air, speaking to Terry Gross. I didn't even know one word from the other when I first became conscious.

My son, he used to give me reading lessons. You know, he would say cat and dog. I mean, they'd be written because he had to have those cards when he was young. I didn't even know what that meant. I knew what nothing meant. have no idea. When your brain is operated on, you have no brain. It's sad. As you can hear from that clip, Neil did make the amazing recovery that her husband insisted on. What may be most miraculous about the entire ordeal is that despite the intense trauma Neil goes through, she somehow

doesn't lose the pregnancy. She was three months along when the stroke happened. In the first week of August, Neil gives birth to their fifth and final child, a happy, perfectly healthy baby girl, Lucy. And life continues. Neal's good buddy, the actress Anne Bancroft, steps into her role on the John Ford film and comes by the house all the time, often with her husband, Mel Brooks. Not for nothing, but knowing what we do now about Doll's feelings about Jews, there is no amount of money I wouldn't pay to just watch him interact with Mel Brooks. Lots of Neil's friends come by to see her during this period. Frank Sinatra shows up with a stack of records. Judy Garland brings flowers. Carrie Grant and John Ford come for coffee.

Robert Altman drops by to cook dinner for the family. Doll's nutty rehab program for his wife has worked. It's an incredible comeback story, and Neil has offered tons of jobs. According to Cohen, Mike Nichols offers her one of the most iconic roles in cinema history, the part of Mrs. Robinson, opposite Dustin Hoffman and the graduate. But Neil doesn't think she's ready for such a heavy lift,

and the role goes, again, to her pal and Bancroft. Instead, Neil takes on some commercials for pain relief, Easy gigs, which speak to her recovery. You can't let a simple headache interfere with the joy of life. Get in the way of your day. The joys that this world belong to the fighters. Let Anneson help you fight headache, pain, and win. While the commercials pay well, the bills for Neal's medical care are astronomical.

Her insurance with the Screen Actors Guild covers some, but with Dahl's insistence on round-the-clock rehab, expenses are adding up. And without Neil fully back at work, Dahl has to become the breadwinner. Dahl tries to figure out how he can start making some real money. He shifts gears. Dahl has always gotten a lot of pleasure out of making up stories for his kids. And with Olivia and Theo's accidents, his kids have been on his mind non-stop for several years now.

He decides to try an experiment. He takes one of his old stories for adults, William and Mary, about a troubled marriage, and more or less rewrites it for kids. It's a strange idea for a children's story, but it's about to become about a million times more successful in that form than it ever was for adults. He does the same thing with another one of his adult stories,

50,000 frog skins. And again, it becomes a classic. It took Dahl going through everything you just heard with his wife and especially with his children for him to finally find his voice. Doll is about to get everything he's ever wanted, become one of the richest, most famous, most successful men in the world. We'll hear all of that in our next episode.

And we'll also hear how he basically does everything he possibly can to screw it all up. The Secret World of Roll Dahl is produced by Imagine Audio and Parallax Studios for IHeart Podcasts. Created and written by me, Aaron Tracy. Produced by Matt Schrader. Post-production by Windhill Studios

with editing, scoring, and sound design by Mark Henry Phillips. Editing by Ryan Seaton. Music by APM. Executive producers, Nathan Clokey, Kara Welker, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Aaron Tracy. Additional voice performances and recreation by Mark Henry Phillips and Eleven Labs.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and review the secret world of Roll Doll on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Copyrate, 26. Imagine Entertainment, IHeartMedia, and Parallax. Hello, gorgeous. It's Lala Kent. Host of Untraditionally Lala. My days of filling up cups at Sir may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley. Live on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes, but over here on my podcast, Untraditionally Lala,

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