March 9, 2026 • 38 mins
Before we see you again on Friday we are sharing the newest release from Imagine Entertainment and iHeart media.
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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-secret-world-of-roald-dahl/id1868436905
The Secret World of Roald Dahl is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of the renowned author's extraordinary, controversial life. What darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids? A dark, twisty, fascinating true story from creator and host Aaron Tracy.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, our menlik Lamoumbao, and thanks for listening to the
a Building. We've had a phenomenal response to the show
and our latest episode drops on Friday. Our friends of
Imagine also made a great show called The Secret World
of Roald Dall that dives into the author's life and
gives really the picture of him warts and all. We
are worn't in the first episode here for you, But
first here's the word from this creator, Aaron Tracy.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hi, this is Aaron Tracy. I'm the creator and host
of the Secret World of Roal Dall from Imagine Entertainment.
iHeart podcasts and Parallax. Did you know that before Roll
Dahl came up with Willie Wonka and the BFG. Here's
a spy for British Intelligence. His job was to seduce
the wives of powerful Americans. Dahl later wrote the screenplay
(00:44):
for a hit James Bond film informed by these experiences.
Dahl was also a fighter pilot, the husband of an
Oscar winner, and an amateur neuroscientist who built a device
that saved thousands of children's lives. The world may know
Roaldall as the most popular children's author ever, but the
man who wrote those stories who lived one of the
most fascinating, most controversial, noisiest lives of his century. You
(01:09):
can find our series on its very own feed by
searching for The Secret World of Role Doll on whatever
platform you're listening on right now. We've been the number
one trending show in the world on one of these platforms,
Pocketcasts for the past two weeks, and we're so incredibly
grateful to our listeners for that. I want to share
our first episode with you here. Hope you enjoy it,
(01:30):
and if you do, please subscribe or follow the show.
It would mean so much to us. And thanks. When
I mentioned the name roll Dall to you.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
What do you think of Definitely you need the BFG.
That was a classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And
I think there was a series of the Gray Glass Elevator.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Love those.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
When you picture Doll in your mind, what does he
look like, Well.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
He's definitely older, gentleman, I would say, seventy ish, kind
of big guy, not fat, not that he doesn't like
fat people, but like you know, a tall man, bin
cardigan sweater, a beard, sitting in a big, kind of
comfy reading chair, kind of like masterpiece theater style.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
When I mentioned the name Roald Dahl, what do you
think of so?
Speaker 5 (02:15):
I think of Charlie and the chocolate factory, Matilda James
and the giant peach, and that he was I think
an anti satelite.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Dad. What do you know about Roald Dahl? Almost nothing.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
I think I know fellow's name, but if you asked
me what he did, I.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Don't think I could tell you anything about. Did you
know that Doll was a spy for British Intelligence, No worry,
I did not know that. That's wild He worked for
at my sex. Very surprising. I'm very curious. Was this
before he wrote his stories?
Speaker 3 (02:49):
It must have been.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
During the war. Roll Dahl was a spy for British intelligence.
What his job was literally to seduce the wives of
powerful Americans and he was really good at it.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
Okay, I don't think that's true.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
I'm telling you it was a spy. I talked to
a lot of people about Roll Doll, and none of
them knew even a fraction of his full story. And
the full story is bananas. Forget the Roll Doll in
your head, the one who's the most successful children's author
of all time. Forget the image you have of him, which,
(03:24):
if it's like mine, is a disheveled BFG lookike grandfather
figure and a worn out cardigan and shaped like a spoon.
Because the Roll Doll I'm about to introduce you to
operated in the shadows of World War Two as a
dashing British spy. Honestly, we could do a whole ten
part series just about the spy unit. Doll was recruited
into during the war, a group of secret British agents
(03:47):
in America that called themselves the Irregulars, a name they
took from the informal network of child Spies and Sharlock Holmes,
which also tells you how they see themselves. Young men
operating in the shadows were traditional agents can't go so.
Picture a handsome twenty five year old Doll, four thousand
miles from home, thrust into this world without a single
(04:07):
day of espionage training. Imagine how intimidated he feels walking
into a room with this collection of remarkably almost suspiciously
handsome and charming men who seem born for this work. Doll,
on the other hand, feels like an impostor in way
over his head. Let's hear from the man himself, roll
Dall describing his unlikely employment goals.
Speaker 6 (04:29):
My job was to try to help Winston Churchill to
get on with FDR and tell Winston what was in
the old boy's mind in America.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I mean, how cool is he playing it there as
if he's just setting a lunch with some old pals
and not orchestrating an alliance between the two most powerful
leaders in the free world. As you'll hear, Doll's whole
life is one surprise after another. It defies all expectations.
We would never expect a writer like say Stephen King
to secretly conduct espionage, or Jason Bourne to retire from
(05:06):
his spy work to pen forty nine beloved books that
change children's literature forever. The combination simply should not exist
in one human being. But then, how do you explain
Roll Dall impossibly implausibly real. Welcome to his deeply bizarre universe.
I promise it'll only get stranger from here. For my
(05:31):
hard podcasts, imagine entertainment and parallax. This is the secret
world of Roald Dahl. I'm your host, Aaron Tracy. I
also teach in the English department at Yale. So books
have always been a huge part of my life, and
dolls were the foundation, the first ones I ever cracked
(05:53):
open and read on my own. Doll's stories are would
turn me onto reading. But that's only part of why
I've spent decades obsessed with Roald Dahl. I'm even more
fascinated by what an enigma he is. He tries on
all these different masks, kind of like Bob Dylan. He's
impossible to nail down. The man is a total cipher,
which is maddening when you think about the fact that
we offer him up to our most impressionable population. I
(06:17):
have two young kids. They're going to grow up reading
Doll like millions of others. Now, when my wife and
I hire a babysitter, you better believe we do a
little digging into who she is first. But we just
happily bring Doll into our children's rooms, and not to
get too precious about it, but into their hearts and minds,
letting him worm directly into their ears night after night.
Shouldn't we have some idea of who this guy is? Well,
(06:41):
I promise you don't, but you're about to. Another reason
I'm really obsessed with Doll is because he lives the noisiest, craziest,
most adventurous life you've ever heard. As a writer, I'm
a writer. Literally, no one would describe me as adventurous.
I write a ton of TV and audio dramas. But
it's eleven am as I record this, and I'm still
in my bathroom. The most adventurous I ever am is
(07:04):
changing up my smoothie recipe by adding peppermint. That's what
being a writer is. But no one told Roald Dall.
You may only KNOWDL for his books, but when we're
done with this series, you're gonna feel like his writing
is about the nineteenth most interesting thing about him, which
is especially bananas. When you'll get the numbers, the man
has sold over three hundred million books. He's been translated
(07:25):
into sixty three languages. And we put that three hundred
million copies sold into context. Herman Melville, Henry James, Virginia Wolf,
Tony Morrison, Philip Roth, fellow children's author Shel Silverstein. Add
up all of their sales of all of their books,
and it equals about twenty five percent of dolls. That's
a nutting number. Here's another one. In twenty eighteen, the
(07:45):
Hollywood Reporter wrote that Netflix spent around one billion dollars
for the rights to Doll's works. But of course his
impact is so much bigger than the stats. The man
has permeated our collective consciousness. I have never in my
life unread to Candy Bar without part of me wondering,
even for just a millisecond, if there might be a
golden ticket in there, which is meant to say, I
(08:08):
don't have my issues with the man. He could be difficult,
sometimes incredibly nasty to those he's closest to, kind of
like some of his characters. It's easy to forget how
he actually treats the kids in his books, especially the
ones who aren't the heroes.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Take missus Glup straight to the fudge room, but look sharp,
or her little boy's liable to get poured into the boiler.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
Do you void him up?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I know it. Goodbye, missus Gloop, Adieu. Alvida's yep. All
those children on the Chocoateur get tortured in gruesome ways.
Sam in the Witches, same in Matilda. There's so much
nastiness there, leaks off the page, staining your fingers. When
he died in nineteen ninety, The Washington Post my hometown
newspaper did not mince words. Quote. No children's author of
(08:51):
the past thirty years has regularly sparked more controversy than
Roald Dahl. On the one hand, kids consistently name him
their favorite writer. On the other, our best critics maintained
that his books are larded with gratuitous violence, bigotry, sexism, vulgarity, greed,
and all manner of foulness. And that's not some hit
piece or social media takedown, it's his obituary. Dall's nastiness
(09:16):
and his controversies have sucked up a lot of oxygen
in the past few years. I now look at the
spines of his books on my shelf not that differently
than I look at JK. Rowlings, which is to say,
kind of queasily. We'll definitely get into all that. It's fascinating,
sometimes ugly stuff from a guy who helped shape generations,
But for now, I'll just say it's a strange, super
complicated thing to admire so much about Dahl with the
(09:38):
knowledge that he wouldn't have come to my Hanica party.
My friend, the writer Ben Dolnik, captures the dilemma perfectly
in a short essay he wrote he writes about watching
his daughter fall headlong quote into that extraordinary, silent, inexpensive schedule,
disrupting passion of reading. Ben wrestles with watching her cherish
(09:58):
books written by a man who may have been repelled
by her very existence. I wanted to start the show
off by talking to friends about their perceptions of Doll,
because the weirdness that people see in him is really telling.
Here's the opening of a BBC profile from nineteen eighty two.
This is how a venerable, respected network introduces one of
the world's most famous authors. The man who lives in
(10:20):
this house makes a very good orange marmalade. He also
beats orchids.
Speaker 6 (10:26):
He has never eaten a dish of tripe in his life,
and he wishes that his dog could speak to him.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
He's Roald dal Who else in the world will be
introduced like that? He makes very good orange marmalade and
has never eaten shripe. But that's how people talk about Doll.
He's a curiosity, a character, not a man. Honestly, I
think it's at least partly due to his appearance. A
real life giant at six foot six plus. He's got
(10:51):
that name. That's so unusual for most people, and his
creativity is just so off the charts. So with all that,
he can't possibly be like you and me, right, he
must be some fantastical creature that just wandered into our world.
People are desperate for him to be a real life
BFG or a mistreunchabile or Willy Wonka, which fine is
not that unfair or unusual. We definitely imagine Hemingway was
(11:13):
as haunted as his characters. We'd feel cheated if Phoebe
waller Bridge wasn't as raw or hilarious as hers. But
here's the crucial difference. Those other writers' characters operate within
the boundaries of recognizable human behavior. Doll's creations exist in
a universe where children turn into blueberries and giants roam
the countryside collecting dreams. So was Doll really as mischievous
(11:34):
and outlandish, whimsical and grotesque as his characters? Sort of?
Now I'm incredibly excited to tell you about Doll's very
strange life as a very real secret agent. Picture Doll
in his early twenties, that critical moment when most of
(11:57):
us are fumbling to find our path. Not long before,
he'd been soaring through the skies as a fighter pilot
for the Royal Air Force, but a series of catastrophic
crashes had left him broken, his flying career abruptly terminated,
so now he's at a crossroads. The war continues to rage,
but his part in it has been stripped away, and
he's looking for what to do with his life. Doll
(12:19):
finds himself at a cocktail party in London that a
date has tried him to. He towers awkwardly above the crowd,
nursing a drink, contemplating an early exit. It's an elite crowd,
but it's a lot of rehearsed anecdotes and performative laughter.
Then something catches his eye, a solitary figure standing apart.
Not a film star or socialite, but someone far more
(12:41):
intriguing to a political obsessive like Dahl. Major Harold Balfour,
a member of Churchill's war cabinet, one of the men
literally deciding the fate of Britain As German bombs fall
in London. Dall's sense says this could be his chance.
Impressing the Major might lead to something, though he has
no idea that this conversation will alter the time trajectory
of his entire life. Let me pause here for a
(13:03):
quick sec to set the scene for what's going on
in the world, because it's crucial to what Doll is
about to become part of. The late nineteen thirties and
early forties are one of those rare times that it's
not an exaggeration to say the fate of the world
is at stake. Hiler isn't just winning battles, He's winning
the war, mostly because the US is sitting on the sidelines.
(13:24):
The British ambassador warrns his government that nine out of
ten Americans are determined to stay out of the war,
in other words, to not help Britain. The most famous
of these is Charles Lenburg.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
It is now obvious that England is losing war, and
I have been forced to the conclusion that we cannot
win this war for England, regardless of how much assistance
we send. That is why the America First Committee has
been formed.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
And this is while Germany is sweeping through Europe. The
Nazis take Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Luxembourg and France. In America, we're just watching an unfold. Many,
if not most, Americans are still traumatized from the first
time we joined at a World War twenty years earlier.
The memory of American boys coming home in coffins We're
(14:18):
not coming home at all, remains raw. The thinking is
simply that Hitler is not our problem. The public isn't
yet aware of what's going on with the Jews of Europe.
The reports of them being rounded up and sent to
concentration camps is just too impossible to believe, so we
choose not to. Britain, of course, is on the brink.
You know this, You've seen the movies, read the books,
(14:39):
listen to the podcasts. Think Churchill pacing War Rooms by Lamplight,
Britain's darkest hour. If FDR doesn't send help and fast,
England is done. So put yourself in Winston Churchill's position.
Your island nation stands as one of the last flickering
lights of democracy in Europe. Your cities are being bombed
into rubble. Your people are sleep subway tunnels, and across
(15:02):
the Atlantics. It's America, powerful, untouched and stubbornly unwilling to
join the fight. What wouldn't you do to change their minds.
At that point is anything off the table. This is
where espionage becomes not just an option but a necessity. Okay,
so back to our cocktail party. Doll spot's Major Balfour,
(15:24):
a man who's signature on documents can move troops and
redirect warplanes. Doll takes a deep breath, and, with that
peculiar confidence that will define him throughout his life, he
crosses the room, introduces himself and simply begins to chat.
Doll gives great chat. His conversation has all the hallmarks
of his later fiction. Wickedly funny, wildly creative, a little dirty,
(15:47):
totally compelling. Doll is one of those people who just
instinctively knows how to captivate. I'm always so jealous of
those people, the ones who have small crowds gathered around
them at parties, Funny and magnetic without being at all
self conscious. The Major, like everyone else who meets Dall
in this period, is taken with him, and then it happens.
The Major tells Doll that he's looking for smart, well
(16:09):
educated young men to go to America to join the
British embassy. This conversation has changed everything, but not how
Doll thinks it has. Dahl thinks he's being recruited for
a diplomatic post. What the Major leaves out is what
he really has in mind for Doll. Military intelligence. The
head of the Irregulars has tasked the Major with finding brilliant, articulate, charming,
(16:33):
morally flexible young men with military backgrounds to join his outfit.
The Major seems to have found such a man. The
very next week, Doll's on a plane to Washington. When
Dolphirst arrives in DC, He's entranced. It's this big cauldron
of power, ego mixed with ambition, mixed with sex, mixed
(16:56):
again with power. Yet it all feels as intimate as
a college campus. Everybody knows everybody. I grew up in
DC and then the Northwest part of it. Walk into
any restaurant, linger in any bookstore, sit at any coffee
shop counter, and people are talking politics. It's in the
water supply, just like the entertainment industry in LA. So
every room Doll enters is an opportunity. Doll's trickiest endeavor
(17:19):
when he first arrives is finding decent housing in the
notoriously overcrowded city. He opens the newspaper and looks through
the classifieds. He finds a surprisingly nice place that he
can actually afford. The reason he can afford it is
because there was a bloody murder suicide in it last week.
The murder victim, Rosemary Sigley, was a beautiful young researcher
for the agency that becomes the CIA. She was also
(17:43):
a wealthy heiress. Her murder was a giant scandal, and
two days after there was a line of people outside
waiting to see if the scene of the crime would
be rented at a discount. You gotta love the real
estate market. But what's important for us is that Doll
is the first man in that line, which tells you
so much about who he is. The future author of
(18:05):
tales filled with darkly comic violence, isn't remotely bothered by
the apartment's bloody history. If anything, there's a flicker of
fascination as he signs the leafs. The apartment's gruesome backstory
isn't a deterrent, It's almost an attraction. The man loves gruesome.
Here's one of his most beloved books, with a little
girl torturing her nemesis. When if you tried to poison me, oh,
(18:34):
I knew it. So much of Doll's fiction pulls the
reader towards scenes of fear and dread. There's a ton
of children in peril and adults with real bad intentions,
danger lurking, and what we thought were safe spaces. He's
able to conjure these scenes so well because they're part
of his fabric, Dahalci's darkness everywhere, which means he barely
(18:54):
notices it anymore. When Dahl moves into Rosemary's place, it
takes him two nights before where he spots the rusty
bloodstains still in the carpet and the single bullet hole
in the ceiling. Lots of people, me very much included,
would immediately move out. Doll simply makes a mental note
of it, another detail in the strange tapestry of his life,
(19:15):
and goes to sleep under the same roof where a
bullet ended someone else's. Now. Dall is ostensibly in DC
to work for the British Embassy, so that's what he
does for a while. He pushes diplomatic papers, attends formal functions,
fills out reports, and he's suffocating. Each morning he sits
before stacks of documents, watching the clock move with excruciating slowness.
(19:39):
Doll wants something bigger for his life. He's searching for
something with meaning. But what Doll doesn't realize is that
someone is watching his every move. The big legendary figure
you need to know about right now is William Stephenson
code name Intrepid. Stevenson is Winston Churchill's head of espionage
(19:59):
in America. He's one of the key inspirations for James Bond,
who was created by one of his agents. This gives
you a sense of what Stephenson looks like, impeccably dressed,
handsome features and penetrating eyes that catalog everything his clean
cut compose and emanates the confidence of a man who
can have you vanished with a single phone call. This
is the man whose attention now turns to Roll Dall
(20:23):
to accomplish Britain's mission during this really scary time. Stevenson
is the one who assembles that elite spiring the Irregulars.
Writer and historian Janette Conak calls their operation one of
the most controversial and almost certainly one of the most
successful covert action campaigns in the Annals of Espionage. Stevenson's
eye for talent is wild just for starters. There's Roll Dall,
(20:46):
of course, and Ian Fleming, who later creates James Bond,
essentially immortalizing his own experiences here, and David Ogilvy, who
goes on to invent modern advertising. Three world class creators
of fantasy. So picture Roll Doll, James Bond, and Don
Draper all hanging out, drinking and seducing their way through
a foreign capital during wartime, and you start to have
(21:07):
a sense of what it's like. The whole thing feels
like the premise of a prestige TV series. Beautiful Rakish
young men recruited into a shadow organization far from home
because of their smarts, persuasiveness, and talent for deception, tasked
with doing whatever they have to to save the free
world from fascism. The mission of the Irregulars is broad
(21:28):
gathering intelligence, sabotaging enemies, and creating propaganda that shifts public opinion.
Their official history describes them as empowered with the vague
task of doing all that was not being done and
could not be done by other means, which come on
is a license to operate in the gray areas. If
I've ever heard one doll can't believe he's been recruited
into this group. A month ago, he was languishing in
(21:51):
the English countryside, desperate to figure out his life, hungry
for purpose. Now he's found a role filled with subterfuge, deceit, storytelling,
and role plays. In other words, all of his natural
skills with the highest stakes imaginable. The personal stakes for
Doll are huge too. He can't go home to Buckingham
Sure after this and tend to the sheep. This job
is about to become his whole identity. You can tell
(22:14):
how formative it all is for Doll by the fact
that it echoes through his later fiction, like a recurring
dream Willy Wonka with an air of mystery beneath a
playful exterior, constantly testing those who enter his orbit. He's
definitely inspired by Stevenson and others Doll works for in
the Spy Game, also the Secret Society and the Witches
that performs covert missions. All of these stories that are
going to captivate millions of children are born in the
(22:37):
shadows of wartime espionage. So far, though the Irregulars are
failing at their task of winning America to their side,
they're forced to get creative One of my favorite tactics
of THEIRS is when they hire a Hungarian astrologer, Louis
de Wall. The assignment they give him to publicly predict
Hitler's demise based on the positions of the stars and
(22:57):
therefore make Germany seem less scary to a Marriayricans. It's like
a pr smear campaign on the fascist dictator. Can't you
just picture these younger regulars around a table at two
am at some smoky Georgetown bar, whiskey flowing. One says,
what if we just told Americans they have nothing to
lose because the stars have already decided the Third Reich
is done for? And instead of laughing it off, there's
(23:19):
a long silence. They look at each other intensely and
say that is brilliant. They're so tickled with their idea
they send Louis on a national tour. Stevenson's main tactics, however,
involved targeting the upper echelons of the US government, and
this is both to bring the US into the war,
and once that's accomplished, to make sure London maintains significant influence.
(23:44):
If Britain can get someone close to the American president,
that would be huge enter young Roll Doll. It turns
out one of Doll's skills in particular makes them especially
effective with the irregulars. It's the same skill he'll later
become legendary for his storytelling. Doll has recently begun writing
short stories. It's not yet the all consuming passion it
(24:06):
will become. Like many young writers, Doll is trying to
find his voice by writing mostly autobiographically. Specifically, he's churning
out brief fiction pieces inspired by his childhood and his
time in the Royal Air Force. The stories are clever
and dark, a little scary, and totally original. One story
in particular centers on these grotesque little creatures he calls
(24:27):
gremlins whose sabotage aircraft a fun Gothic story, which doubles
is a fable for American and British cooperation. One reason
Doll's work continues to be read and seen and performed
over a century after his birth is that late Greek
myths his narratives tapped directly into our primal fears and desires.
They speak to universal human concerns wrapped in the irresistible
(24:49):
package of the bizarre and scary and funny. The Gremlins
has all of this, And in case you're wondering, as
I was, this Gremlins has nothing to do with the
Stephen Spielberg produced Classic. Doll mails the story out to
every magazine accepting unsolicited submissions, and one bites the Gremlins
gets published in a local journal, and the story connects
(25:10):
with readers. Those who dig it pass it around to
their pals. Of course, in these days that means literally
handing your copy of the physical magazine to someone. Eventually,
because this is just how Doll's luck works, his story
gets passed to a certain very important person you may
have heard.
Speaker 6 (25:26):
Of, Eleanor Roosevelt, ready to her grandchildren. And I loved
this book.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Here's Dahl years later on a chat show on BBC one,
speaking to host Terry Wogan about his stroke of incredible fortune.
Speaker 6 (25:38):
And so I got invited to the White House and
we got to know each other a bit, you know,
and I would go for weekends at Fdr Haad. His
country place is called Hyde Park, a fast pace, and
used to go there not to know him. I was
only a young chap of twenty six in an RAF
(25:59):
uniform and had no business around there.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Really, are you kidding me? First spy. Just befriending a
staffer or an intern in the Roosevelt administration would be giant. Doll,
in his mid twenties, becomes pals with the First Family
and how to do it through his skill he hasn't
yet realized will be his superpower. Making up a clever story,
(26:22):
Dall spends his time at Hyde Park, swimming, bird watching, barbecuing,
and drinking with the President and First Lady. He's making
mental notes on everything, desperate to report it all back
to Stevenson and prove himself in the job. According to Doll,
he even manages to spend time alone with FDR mixing
Martiniz before lunch, while the tipsy President says things like
I just received an interesting cable from mister Churchill and
(26:44):
then proceeds to tell Doll what Churchill wrote Surprise, surprise.
FDR clearly takes a liking to Doll two. He even
drives Doll around the property and especially made car. It
all feels pretty surreal for a young man not many
years out of high school who's been tapped as a
spy and is now casually hanging out with the most
powerful couple on the planet. At the end, of his
(27:07):
first weekend with the First Family in all those lavish surroundings,
Doll goes back to his tiny apartment with the bloodstained
carpet and writes up an incredibly thorough twelve page report
with journalistic precision quote visit to Hyde Park July second
to fourth. Yeah, he got invited there for July fourth.
Doll's report includes everything FDR said about Churchill, his impressions
(27:29):
about whether FDR will run for another term, and everything
else he thinks could even possibly be relevant. We don't
know whether Doll's report was read by Churchill himself, but
it's clear his work helps the British government gain insight
into where America stands. There's even a suggestion that Roosevelt
may have used all to convey information to the British
that was impossible for FDR to stay outright for diplomatic reasons.
(27:52):
For Doll, it is such a head trip. Writer Matthew
Denison points out Rold's life have become a double life.
He was still a Stenseti working for the British embassy.
At the same time he was a gather and conduit
of information in Britain's best interests. Needless to say Dolls.
Handlers are more than a little shocked and beyond thrilled
with this kid, and Doll's early success only makes him
(28:14):
more confident. The young man who felt rudderless just months
earlier now moves through Washington with the assurance of someone
who believes he can't fail. One of dolls more salacious
tasks for the Irregulars is seducing powerful women in order
to enlist their help. This is a task the young
(28:35):
Doll is very excited about. He's also built for it,
and he uses this trait for his most important seduction
with a woman with the very whimsical, very dolly in name,
Claire Booth. Loose. Dolls first sent to Claire because of
who she's married to. Claire is one half of one
of the most influential power couples of the century. Her
husband is Henry Loose, who builds a media empire that
(28:57):
quite literally shapes what millions of Americans think. He's the
founder of Ready for It, Time Magazine, Fortune Magazine, Life Magazine,
and Sports Illustrated. When these publications begin running pieces with
distinctly anti British undertones, British intelligence is not happy for
a nation fighting for its survival. This isn't just bad press,
it's an existential threat. If American public opinion turns against Britain,
(29:22):
vital Aid could evaporate overnight. The irregulars have to find
a way to change the tenor of Henry's magazines. They're
not sure how to reach Henry, who's notoriously stubborn, but
maybe they can get to his wife. After all, it's
an open secret that the loose marriage is unconventional for
its final twenty eight years. Henry apparently refuses to sleep
with Claire. He says he's in such profound awe of
(29:43):
her that he can't get aroused, a truly tragic condition
that vanishes whenever he's around almost literally any other woman.
Dahl first meets Claire at the New York premiere of
a propaganda film, Eagle Squadron. It's about US airman who
volunteered to fly with the Royal Air Force. The lobby
outside the screening room is packed with DC power players.
(30:04):
Cigar smoke hangs in lazy clouds beneath crystal chandeliers. The
murmur of hush conversations about policy and the war intermingles
with the clink of cocktail glasses. Doll's date, Nancy Carroll,
is a celebrity, once nominated for Best Actress, which tells
you everything about Doll's social currency. Their whispers about the
impropriety of Nancy's obvious infatuation with Dol, who's twelve years
(30:27):
younger than her, But Nancy doesn't seem to care, and
neither does All. He already draws attention with his height
and good looks. He enjoys the gaze of the room,
but doesn't seek it, and his focus is now pulled elsewhere.
Claire Loose is not in a spotlight, but in a
pocket of conversation where men lean down to hear her.
Doll doesn't approach, not yet. He observes how Claire holds court,
(30:51):
teasing some young congressman who said the wrong thing. The
house lights begin to flicker. Dall leads Nancy into the theater,
but as they settle in his eyes remain unclear. Claire
spots his stare, this impossibly handsome, impossibly composed British diplomat.
She gets a chill when she realizes he's not looking away.
He's telling her this look is not a passing glance,
(31:13):
not an accident. Doll has already been briefed on Claire
by the irregulars. For Claire's part, there's no flustered, bashful reaction.
Dall does not return home that night. Later in the week,
when Dall dutifully writes a letter to his mother, he
tells her everything, and I mean everything, even about his
awkward exchange with his landlady after getting home from Claire's.
(31:36):
He writes, quote, I got home at nine am the
next morning. I had to do a lot of talking
to re establish my reputation. Dall's job, of course, isn't
just to have one night stance. If he's going to
change Claire's opinion of the Brits and try to get
her to influence her husband's magazines, it needs to be
a more involved affair. Dall soon realizes focusing only only
(32:00):
effect Claire might have on time and life is shortsighted.
Changing Claire's mind about the Brits will also be hugely helpful,
because what I haven't mentioned yet is that Claire is
incredibly influential in her own right. Claire lives a giant life,
almost as noisy as dolls Lakedall. Claire finds incredible success
in a number of completely different fields. She starts out
(32:22):
as a short story writer. The New York Times finds
her first published volume, Superficial, but praises its quote lovely
festoons of epigrams, and writes, what malice there may be
in these pages has a falinity that is the purest angoring.
I have absolutely no idea what that means either, but
I guess it's not good because it pushes Claire to
pivot away from short stories and to try playwriting. Turns
(32:45):
out she's pretty good at it. In nineteen thirty six,
Claire writes The Women, which runs over six hundred performances
on Broadway. It's a commentary on the pamper lives of
wealthy Manhattan socialites, which Claire is about to become. The
play is adapted to twice for the movies, later with
Annet Betting and Meg Ryan, but first with Joan Crawford.
Speaker 5 (33:05):
Well Girl, looks like it's back to the perfume grounded
for me. And by the way, there's a name for you, ladies,
but it is used in high society outside.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Of a kennel Lake Dahl, Claire bores easily. After her
success with The Women, Claire decides to move into journalism.
She works at Vogue Vanity Fair, then decides to try
war correspondent for Life magazine. Growing restless yet again, Claire
takes her varied experiences in creative writing, journalism and in
the war and decides to run for Congress. Accomplished, beautiful
(33:38):
and wealthy, Claire wins her election, and she's seated on
the powerful House Military Affairs Committee. Here she is years
later on the cartoonishly conservative William F. Buckley Show, speaking
about the subject of men versus women.
Speaker 7 (33:51):
Man's both strength. We're stronger than a woman's strength. It's
that simple, after which, in order to get out from
anger developed a thing called gile Gle was weaponed against tyranny.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
With Claire's seat in Congress, her powerful committee assignment, and
her unique ability to captivate audiences with her writing, plus
her husband's a little publishing empire, you could argue Claire's
about as influential as it gets, which is bad for
the Brits, because she also gives a blistering forty minute
speech on the House floor arguing passionately against cooperation with England.
(34:26):
If Doll can help sway her, he'll be a hero
to the irregulars. Claire is in a very different social
stratosphere than twenty somethingter Doll, who's living off cheese sandwiches
in his tiny walk up apartment. But even though Claire
is already incredibly successful, anne married, and at thirty nine,
thirteen years older than Dol, she falls fro him. Here's
(34:47):
a tall, handsome ex pilot who can talk literature and
theater with her in a way most DC boys cannot.
The relationship is electric, and Doll is soon complaining to
his superiors about Claire's appetite. According to a lawyer who
serves an FDR's administration, again with a name that may
as well be out of a Doll story, creak more Fath,
(35:07):
Doll confides in him that he just can't take another
night with Claire. She's completely worn him out over three
NonStop evenings. He doesn't have anything left. I went to
the ambassador this morning, Doll says, and I said, you know,
it's a great assignment, but I just can't go on.
And according to Doll, the ambassador replied, Rold, did you
ever see the Charles Lotton movie Henry the Eighth Do
(35:29):
you remember the scene of Henry going to the bedroom
with Anne of Cleaves, and he turns and says, the
things I've done for England, Well, that's what you've got
to do. Many years later, Dol will put the things
I've done for England line into Sean Connery's mouth as
James Bond, I don't really believe the British ambassador said
all that to Doll. To me, this feels less like
(35:51):
a real complaint and more like a humble brag. Doll
was trying to figure out what it means to be
a man in this uncertain period. Should he be a
macho playboy or a more sensitive man of letters. He's
twenty six. This is when you figure out who you are,
which isn't easy when you're lying about your identity. It's
almost everyone you meet. The overall effect of Doll's relationship
(36:12):
with Claire is pretty profound. He reports back on all
his intimate, candid conversations with her. He's able to tell
his superiors about internal debates regarding the British that are
happening in Congress and behind closed doors in influential media circles.
He's offering unparalleled insight into American political dynamics, and he
helps the British craft proactive ways to engage the Americans
(36:32):
for help, and pretty soon, wouldn't you know it, Life
magazine is running some pro British stories, framing Britain as
America's most essential ally. But even more importantly, Doll is
in weakending with the President, carrying on an affair with
the congresswoman, and mingling with some of the most powerful
figures in the country. In espionage accesses everything, and doll
(36:56):
has it, but he's still far from achieving all his goals.
He still has a lot of work left to do,
and he's going to have to do it with a
ton of obstacles in his way. While I've mentioned that
pretty much everybody who meets Stalla loves him, the truth
is that when anyone is as successful as Dollars, there
are going to be those who don't appreciate it. A charming, arrogant, handsome,
(37:16):
twenty six year old foreigner actively practicing espionage on behalf
of six in the US and conducting affairs with some
of the most powerful women in the nation, Yeah, that's
going to engender some enemies, for one, the FBI. The
(37:40):
Secret World of Roald 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
wind Hill Studios, with editing, scoring, and sound design by
Mark Henry Phillips, Editing by Ryan Setan, Music by a PM.
(38:03):
Executive producers Nathan Cloke, Karl Welker, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard,
and Aaron Tracy. Additional voice performances and recreation by Mark
Henry Phillips and eleven Laps. 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.
(38:24):
Copyright twenty twenty six Imagine Entertainment, iHeartMedia and Parallax
Hello, our menlik Lamoumbao, and thanks for listening to the
a Building. We've had a phenomenal response to the show
and our latest episode drops on Friday. Our friends of
Imagine also made a great show called The Secret World
of Roald Dall that dives into the author's life and
gives really the picture of him warts and all. We
are worn't in the first episode here for you, But
first here's the word from this creator, Aaron Tracy.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hi, this is Aaron Tracy. I'm the creator and host
of the Secret World of Roal Dall from Imagine Entertainment.
iHeart podcasts and Parallax. Did you know that before Roll
Dahl came up with Willie Wonka and the BFG. Here's
a spy for British Intelligence. His job was to seduce
the wives of powerful Americans. Dahl later wrote the screenplay
(00:44):
for a hit James Bond film informed by these experiences.
Dahl was also a fighter pilot, the husband of an
Oscar winner, and an amateur neuroscientist who built a device
that saved thousands of children's lives. The world may know
Roaldall as the most popular children's author ever, but the
man who wrote those stories who lived one of the
most fascinating, most controversial, noisiest lives of his century. You
(01:09):
can find our series on its very own feed by
searching for The Secret World of Role Doll on whatever
platform you're listening on right now. We've been the number
one trending show in the world on one of these platforms,
Pocketcasts for the past two weeks, and we're so incredibly
grateful to our listeners for that. I want to share
our first episode with you here. Hope you enjoy it,
(01:30):
and if you do, please subscribe or follow the show.
It would mean so much to us. And thanks. When
I mentioned the name roll Dall to you.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
What do you think of Definitely you need the BFG.
That was a classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And
I think there was a series of the Gray Glass Elevator.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Love those.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
When you picture Doll in your mind, what does he
look like, Well.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
He's definitely older, gentleman, I would say, seventy ish, kind
of big guy, not fat, not that he doesn't like
fat people, but like you know, a tall man, bin
cardigan sweater, a beard, sitting in a big, kind of
comfy reading chair, kind of like masterpiece theater style.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
When I mentioned the name Roald Dahl, what do you
think of so?
Speaker 5 (02:15):
I think of Charlie and the chocolate factory, Matilda James
and the giant peach, and that he was I think
an anti satelite.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Dad. What do you know about Roald Dahl? Almost nothing.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
I think I know fellow's name, but if you asked
me what he did, I.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Don't think I could tell you anything about. Did you
know that Doll was a spy for British Intelligence, No worry,
I did not know that. That's wild He worked for
at my sex. Very surprising. I'm very curious. Was this
before he wrote his stories?
Speaker 3 (02:49):
It must have been.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
During the war. Roll Dahl was a spy for British intelligence.
What his job was literally to seduce the wives of
powerful Americans and he was really good at it.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
Okay, I don't think that's true.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
I'm telling you it was a spy. I talked to
a lot of people about Roll Doll, and none of
them knew even a fraction of his full story. And
the full story is bananas. Forget the Roll Doll in
your head, the one who's the most successful children's author
of all time. Forget the image you have of him, which,
(03:24):
if it's like mine, is a disheveled BFG lookike grandfather
figure and a worn out cardigan and shaped like a spoon.
Because the Roll Doll I'm about to introduce you to
operated in the shadows of World War Two as a
dashing British spy. Honestly, we could do a whole ten
part series just about the spy unit. Doll was recruited
into during the war, a group of secret British agents
(03:47):
in America that called themselves the Irregulars, a name they
took from the informal network of child Spies and Sharlock Holmes,
which also tells you how they see themselves. Young men
operating in the shadows were traditional agents can't go so.
Picture a handsome twenty five year old Doll, four thousand
miles from home, thrust into this world without a single
(04:07):
day of espionage training. Imagine how intimidated he feels walking
into a room with this collection of remarkably almost suspiciously
handsome and charming men who seem born for this work. Doll,
on the other hand, feels like an impostor in way
over his head. Let's hear from the man himself, roll
Dall describing his unlikely employment goals.
Speaker 6 (04:29):
My job was to try to help Winston Churchill to
get on with FDR and tell Winston what was in
the old boy's mind in America.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I mean, how cool is he playing it there as
if he's just setting a lunch with some old pals
and not orchestrating an alliance between the two most powerful
leaders in the free world. As you'll hear, Doll's whole
life is one surprise after another. It defies all expectations.
We would never expect a writer like say Stephen King
to secretly conduct espionage, or Jason Bourne to retire from
(05:06):
his spy work to pen forty nine beloved books that
change children's literature forever. The combination simply should not exist
in one human being. But then, how do you explain
Roll Dall impossibly implausibly real. Welcome to his deeply bizarre universe.
I promise it'll only get stranger from here. For my
(05:31):
hard podcasts, imagine entertainment and parallax. This is the secret
world of Roald Dahl. I'm your host, Aaron Tracy. I
also teach in the English department at Yale. So books
have always been a huge part of my life, and
dolls were the foundation, the first ones I ever cracked
(05:53):
open and read on my own. Doll's stories are would
turn me onto reading. But that's only part of why
I've spent decades obsessed with Roald Dahl. I'm even more
fascinated by what an enigma he is. He tries on
all these different masks, kind of like Bob Dylan. He's
impossible to nail down. The man is a total cipher,
which is maddening when you think about the fact that
we offer him up to our most impressionable population. I
(06:17):
have two young kids. They're going to grow up reading
Doll like millions of others. Now, when my wife and
I hire a babysitter, you better believe we do a
little digging into who she is first. But we just
happily bring Doll into our children's rooms, and not to
get too precious about it, but into their hearts and minds,
letting him worm directly into their ears night after night.
Shouldn't we have some idea of who this guy is? Well,
(06:41):
I promise you don't, but you're about to. Another reason
I'm really obsessed with Doll is because he lives the noisiest, craziest,
most adventurous life you've ever heard. As a writer, I'm
a writer. Literally, no one would describe me as adventurous.
I write a ton of TV and audio dramas. But
it's eleven am as I record this, and I'm still
in my bathroom. The most adventurous I ever am is
(07:04):
changing up my smoothie recipe by adding peppermint. That's what
being a writer is. But no one told Roald Dall.
You may only KNOWDL for his books, but when we're
done with this series, you're gonna feel like his writing
is about the nineteenth most interesting thing about him, which
is especially bananas. When you'll get the numbers, the man
has sold over three hundred million books. He's been translated
(07:25):
into sixty three languages. And we put that three hundred
million copies sold into context. Herman Melville, Henry James, Virginia Wolf,
Tony Morrison, Philip Roth, fellow children's author Shel Silverstein. Add
up all of their sales of all of their books,
and it equals about twenty five percent of dolls. That's
a nutting number. Here's another one. In twenty eighteen, the
(07:45):
Hollywood Reporter wrote that Netflix spent around one billion dollars
for the rights to Doll's works. But of course his
impact is so much bigger than the stats. The man
has permeated our collective consciousness. I have never in my
life unread to Candy Bar without part of me wondering,
even for just a millisecond, if there might be a
golden ticket in there, which is meant to say, I
(08:08):
don't have my issues with the man. He could be difficult,
sometimes incredibly nasty to those he's closest to, kind of
like some of his characters. It's easy to forget how
he actually treats the kids in his books, especially the
ones who aren't the heroes.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Take missus Glup straight to the fudge room, but look sharp,
or her little boy's liable to get poured into the boiler.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
Do you void him up?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I know it. Goodbye, missus Gloop, Adieu. Alvida's yep. All
those children on the Chocoateur get tortured in gruesome ways.
Sam in the Witches, same in Matilda. There's so much
nastiness there, leaks off the page, staining your fingers. When
he died in nineteen ninety, The Washington Post my hometown
newspaper did not mince words. Quote. No children's author of
(08:51):
the past thirty years has regularly sparked more controversy than
Roald Dahl. On the one hand, kids consistently name him
their favorite writer. On the other, our best critics maintained
that his books are larded with gratuitous violence, bigotry, sexism, vulgarity, greed,
and all manner of foulness. And that's not some hit
piece or social media takedown, it's his obituary. Dall's nastiness
(09:16):
and his controversies have sucked up a lot of oxygen
in the past few years. I now look at the
spines of his books on my shelf not that differently
than I look at JK. Rowlings, which is to say,
kind of queasily. We'll definitely get into all that. It's fascinating,
sometimes ugly stuff from a guy who helped shape generations,
But for now, I'll just say it's a strange, super
complicated thing to admire so much about Dahl with the
(09:38):
knowledge that he wouldn't have come to my Hanica party.
My friend, the writer Ben Dolnik, captures the dilemma perfectly
in a short essay he wrote he writes about watching
his daughter fall headlong quote into that extraordinary, silent, inexpensive schedule,
disrupting passion of reading. Ben wrestles with watching her cherish
(09:58):
books written by a man who may have been repelled
by her very existence. I wanted to start the show
off by talking to friends about their perceptions of Doll,
because the weirdness that people see in him is really telling.
Here's the opening of a BBC profile from nineteen eighty two.
This is how a venerable, respected network introduces one of
the world's most famous authors. The man who lives in
(10:20):
this house makes a very good orange marmalade. He also
beats orchids.
Speaker 6 (10:26):
He has never eaten a dish of tripe in his life,
and he wishes that his dog could speak to him.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
He's Roald dal Who else in the world will be
introduced like that? He makes very good orange marmalade and
has never eaten shripe. But that's how people talk about Doll.
He's a curiosity, a character, not a man. Honestly, I
think it's at least partly due to his appearance. A
real life giant at six foot six plus. He's got
(10:51):
that name. That's so unusual for most people, and his
creativity is just so off the charts. So with all that,
he can't possibly be like you and me, right, he
must be some fantastical creature that just wandered into our world.
People are desperate for him to be a real life
BFG or a mistreunchabile or Willy Wonka, which fine is
not that unfair or unusual. We definitely imagine Hemingway was
(11:13):
as haunted as his characters. We'd feel cheated if Phoebe
waller Bridge wasn't as raw or hilarious as hers. But
here's the crucial difference. Those other writers' characters operate within
the boundaries of recognizable human behavior. Doll's creations exist in
a universe where children turn into blueberries and giants roam
the countryside collecting dreams. So was Doll really as mischievous
(11:34):
and outlandish, whimsical and grotesque as his characters? Sort of?
Now I'm incredibly excited to tell you about Doll's very
strange life as a very real secret agent. Picture Doll
in his early twenties, that critical moment when most of
(11:57):
us are fumbling to find our path. Not long before,
he'd been soaring through the skies as a fighter pilot
for the Royal Air Force, but a series of catastrophic
crashes had left him broken, his flying career abruptly terminated,
so now he's at a crossroads. The war continues to rage,
but his part in it has been stripped away, and
he's looking for what to do with his life. Doll
(12:19):
finds himself at a cocktail party in London that a
date has tried him to. He towers awkwardly above the crowd,
nursing a drink, contemplating an early exit. It's an elite crowd,
but it's a lot of rehearsed anecdotes and performative laughter.
Then something catches his eye, a solitary figure standing apart.
Not a film star or socialite, but someone far more
(12:41):
intriguing to a political obsessive like Dahl. Major Harold Balfour,
a member of Churchill's war cabinet, one of the men
literally deciding the fate of Britain As German bombs fall
in London. Dall's sense says this could be his chance.
Impressing the Major might lead to something, though he has
no idea that this conversation will alter the time trajectory
of his entire life. Let me pause here for a
(13:03):
quick sec to set the scene for what's going on
in the world, because it's crucial to what Doll is
about to become part of. The late nineteen thirties and
early forties are one of those rare times that it's
not an exaggeration to say the fate of the world
is at stake. Hiler isn't just winning battles, He's winning
the war, mostly because the US is sitting on the sidelines.
(13:24):
The British ambassador warrns his government that nine out of
ten Americans are determined to stay out of the war,
in other words, to not help Britain. The most famous
of these is Charles Lenburg.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
It is now obvious that England is losing war, and
I have been forced to the conclusion that we cannot
win this war for England, regardless of how much assistance
we send. That is why the America First Committee has
been formed.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
And this is while Germany is sweeping through Europe. The
Nazis take Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Luxembourg and France. In America, we're just watching an unfold. Many,
if not most, Americans are still traumatized from the first
time we joined at a World War twenty years earlier.
The memory of American boys coming home in coffins We're
(14:18):
not coming home at all, remains raw. The thinking is
simply that Hitler is not our problem. The public isn't
yet aware of what's going on with the Jews of Europe.
The reports of them being rounded up and sent to
concentration camps is just too impossible to believe, so we
choose not to. Britain, of course, is on the brink.
You know this, You've seen the movies, read the books,
(14:39):
listen to the podcasts. Think Churchill pacing War Rooms by Lamplight,
Britain's darkest hour. If FDR doesn't send help and fast,
England is done. So put yourself in Winston Churchill's position.
Your island nation stands as one of the last flickering
lights of democracy in Europe. Your cities are being bombed
into rubble. Your people are sleep subway tunnels, and across
(15:02):
the Atlantics. It's America, powerful, untouched and stubbornly unwilling to
join the fight. What wouldn't you do to change their minds.
At that point is anything off the table. This is
where espionage becomes not just an option but a necessity. Okay,
so back to our cocktail party. Doll spot's Major Balfour,
(15:24):
a man who's signature on documents can move troops and
redirect warplanes. Doll takes a deep breath, and, with that
peculiar confidence that will define him throughout his life, he
crosses the room, introduces himself and simply begins to chat.
Doll gives great chat. His conversation has all the hallmarks
of his later fiction. Wickedly funny, wildly creative, a little dirty,
(15:47):
totally compelling. Doll is one of those people who just
instinctively knows how to captivate. I'm always so jealous of
those people, the ones who have small crowds gathered around
them at parties, Funny and magnetic without being at all
self conscious. The Major, like everyone else who meets Dall
in this period, is taken with him, and then it happens.
The Major tells Doll that he's looking for smart, well
(16:09):
educated young men to go to America to join the
British embassy. This conversation has changed everything, but not how
Doll thinks it has. Dahl thinks he's being recruited for
a diplomatic post. What the Major leaves out is what
he really has in mind for Doll. Military intelligence. The
head of the Irregulars has tasked the Major with finding brilliant, articulate, charming,
(16:33):
morally flexible young men with military backgrounds to join his outfit.
The Major seems to have found such a man. The
very next week, Doll's on a plane to Washington. When
Dolphirst arrives in DC, He's entranced. It's this big cauldron
of power, ego mixed with ambition, mixed with sex, mixed
(16:56):
again with power. Yet it all feels as intimate as
a college campus. Everybody knows everybody. I grew up in
DC and then the Northwest part of it. Walk into
any restaurant, linger in any bookstore, sit at any coffee
shop counter, and people are talking politics. It's in the
water supply, just like the entertainment industry in LA. So
every room Doll enters is an opportunity. Doll's trickiest endeavor
(17:19):
when he first arrives is finding decent housing in the
notoriously overcrowded city. He opens the newspaper and looks through
the classifieds. He finds a surprisingly nice place that he
can actually afford. The reason he can afford it is
because there was a bloody murder suicide in it last week.
The murder victim, Rosemary Sigley, was a beautiful young researcher
for the agency that becomes the CIA. She was also
(17:43):
a wealthy heiress. Her murder was a giant scandal, and
two days after there was a line of people outside
waiting to see if the scene of the crime would
be rented at a discount. You gotta love the real
estate market. But what's important for us is that Doll
is the first man in that line, which tells you
so much about who he is. The future author of
(18:05):
tales filled with darkly comic violence, isn't remotely bothered by
the apartment's bloody history. If anything, there's a flicker of
fascination as he signs the leafs. The apartment's gruesome backstory
isn't a deterrent, It's almost an attraction. The man loves gruesome.
Here's one of his most beloved books, with a little
girl torturing her nemesis. When if you tried to poison me, oh,
(18:34):
I knew it. So much of Doll's fiction pulls the
reader towards scenes of fear and dread. There's a ton
of children in peril and adults with real bad intentions,
danger lurking, and what we thought were safe spaces. He's
able to conjure these scenes so well because they're part
of his fabric, Dahalci's darkness everywhere, which means he barely
(18:54):
notices it anymore. When Dahl moves into Rosemary's place, it
takes him two nights before where he spots the rusty
bloodstains still in the carpet and the single bullet hole
in the ceiling. Lots of people, me very much included,
would immediately move out. Doll simply makes a mental note
of it, another detail in the strange tapestry of his life,
(19:15):
and goes to sleep under the same roof where a
bullet ended someone else's. Now. Dall is ostensibly in DC
to work for the British Embassy, so that's what he
does for a while. He pushes diplomatic papers, attends formal functions,
fills out reports, and he's suffocating. Each morning he sits
before stacks of documents, watching the clock move with excruciating slowness.
(19:39):
Doll wants something bigger for his life. He's searching for
something with meaning. But what Doll doesn't realize is that
someone is watching his every move. The big legendary figure
you need to know about right now is William Stephenson
code name Intrepid. Stevenson is Winston Churchill's head of espionage
(19:59):
in America. He's one of the key inspirations for James Bond,
who was created by one of his agents. This gives
you a sense of what Stephenson looks like, impeccably dressed,
handsome features and penetrating eyes that catalog everything his clean
cut compose and emanates the confidence of a man who
can have you vanished with a single phone call. This
is the man whose attention now turns to Roll Dall
(20:23):
to accomplish Britain's mission during this really scary time. Stevenson
is the one who assembles that elite spiring the Irregulars.
Writer and historian Janette Conak calls their operation one of
the most controversial and almost certainly one of the most
successful covert action campaigns in the Annals of Espionage. Stevenson's
eye for talent is wild just for starters. There's Roll Dall,
(20:46):
of course, and Ian Fleming, who later creates James Bond,
essentially immortalizing his own experiences here, and David Ogilvy, who
goes on to invent modern advertising. Three world class creators
of fantasy. So picture Roll Doll, James Bond, and Don
Draper all hanging out, drinking and seducing their way through
a foreign capital during wartime, and you start to have
(21:07):
a sense of what it's like. The whole thing feels
like the premise of a prestige TV series. Beautiful Rakish
young men recruited into a shadow organization far from home
because of their smarts, persuasiveness, and talent for deception, tasked
with doing whatever they have to to save the free
world from fascism. The mission of the Irregulars is broad
(21:28):
gathering intelligence, sabotaging enemies, and creating propaganda that shifts public opinion.
Their official history describes them as empowered with the vague
task of doing all that was not being done and
could not be done by other means, which come on
is a license to operate in the gray areas. If
I've ever heard one doll can't believe he's been recruited
into this group. A month ago, he was languishing in
(21:51):
the English countryside, desperate to figure out his life, hungry
for purpose. Now he's found a role filled with subterfuge, deceit, storytelling,
and role plays. In other words, all of his natural
skills with the highest stakes imaginable. The personal stakes for
Doll are huge too. He can't go home to Buckingham
Sure after this and tend to the sheep. This job
is about to become his whole identity. You can tell
(22:14):
how formative it all is for Doll by the fact
that it echoes through his later fiction, like a recurring
dream Willy Wonka with an air of mystery beneath a
playful exterior, constantly testing those who enter his orbit. He's
definitely inspired by Stevenson and others Doll works for in
the Spy Game, also the Secret Society and the Witches
that performs covert missions. All of these stories that are
going to captivate millions of children are born in the
(22:37):
shadows of wartime espionage. So far, though the Irregulars are
failing at their task of winning America to their side,
they're forced to get creative One of my favorite tactics
of THEIRS is when they hire a Hungarian astrologer, Louis
de Wall. The assignment they give him to publicly predict
Hitler's demise based on the positions of the stars and
(22:57):
therefore make Germany seem less scary to a Marriayricans. It's like
a pr smear campaign on the fascist dictator. Can't you
just picture these younger regulars around a table at two
am at some smoky Georgetown bar, whiskey flowing. One says,
what if we just told Americans they have nothing to
lose because the stars have already decided the Third Reich
is done for? And instead of laughing it off, there's
(23:19):
a long silence. They look at each other intensely and
say that is brilliant. They're so tickled with their idea
they send Louis on a national tour. Stevenson's main tactics, however,
involved targeting the upper echelons of the US government, and
this is both to bring the US into the war,
and once that's accomplished, to make sure London maintains significant influence.
(23:44):
If Britain can get someone close to the American president,
that would be huge enter young Roll Doll. It turns
out one of Doll's skills in particular makes them especially
effective with the irregulars. It's the same skill he'll later
become legendary for his storytelling. Doll has recently begun writing
short stories. It's not yet the all consuming passion it
(24:06):
will become. Like many young writers, Doll is trying to
find his voice by writing mostly autobiographically. Specifically, he's churning
out brief fiction pieces inspired by his childhood and his
time in the Royal Air Force. The stories are clever
and dark, a little scary, and totally original. One story
in particular centers on these grotesque little creatures he calls
(24:27):
gremlins whose sabotage aircraft a fun Gothic story, which doubles
is a fable for American and British cooperation. One reason
Doll's work continues to be read and seen and performed
over a century after his birth is that late Greek
myths his narratives tapped directly into our primal fears and desires.
They speak to universal human concerns wrapped in the irresistible
(24:49):
package of the bizarre and scary and funny. The Gremlins
has all of this, And in case you're wondering, as
I was, this Gremlins has nothing to do with the
Stephen Spielberg produced Classic. Doll mails the story out to
every magazine accepting unsolicited submissions, and one bites the Gremlins
gets published in a local journal, and the story connects
(25:10):
with readers. Those who dig it pass it around to
their pals. Of course, in these days that means literally
handing your copy of the physical magazine to someone. Eventually,
because this is just how Doll's luck works, his story
gets passed to a certain very important person you may
have heard.
Speaker 6 (25:26):
Of, Eleanor Roosevelt, ready to her grandchildren. And I loved
this book.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Here's Dahl years later on a chat show on BBC one,
speaking to host Terry Wogan about his stroke of incredible fortune.
Speaker 6 (25:38):
And so I got invited to the White House and
we got to know each other a bit, you know,
and I would go for weekends at Fdr Haad. His
country place is called Hyde Park, a fast pace, and
used to go there not to know him. I was
only a young chap of twenty six in an RAF
(25:59):
uniform and had no business around there.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Really, are you kidding me? First spy. Just befriending a
staffer or an intern in the Roosevelt administration would be giant. Doll,
in his mid twenties, becomes pals with the First Family
and how to do it through his skill he hasn't
yet realized will be his superpower. Making up a clever story,
(26:22):
Dall spends his time at Hyde Park, swimming, bird watching, barbecuing,
and drinking with the President and First Lady. He's making
mental notes on everything, desperate to report it all back
to Stevenson and prove himself in the job. According to Doll,
he even manages to spend time alone with FDR mixing
Martiniz before lunch, while the tipsy President says things like
I just received an interesting cable from mister Churchill and
(26:44):
then proceeds to tell Doll what Churchill wrote Surprise, surprise.
FDR clearly takes a liking to Doll two. He even
drives Doll around the property and especially made car. It
all feels pretty surreal for a young man not many
years out of high school who's been tapped as a
spy and is now casually hanging out with the most
powerful couple on the planet. At the end, of his
(27:07):
first weekend with the First Family in all those lavish surroundings,
Doll goes back to his tiny apartment with the bloodstained
carpet and writes up an incredibly thorough twelve page report
with journalistic precision quote visit to Hyde Park July second
to fourth. Yeah, he got invited there for July fourth.
Doll's report includes everything FDR said about Churchill, his impressions
(27:29):
about whether FDR will run for another term, and everything
else he thinks could even possibly be relevant. We don't
know whether Doll's report was read by Churchill himself, but
it's clear his work helps the British government gain insight
into where America stands. There's even a suggestion that Roosevelt
may have used all to convey information to the British
that was impossible for FDR to stay outright for diplomatic reasons.
(27:52):
For Doll, it is such a head trip. Writer Matthew
Denison points out Rold's life have become a double life.
He was still a Stenseti working for the British embassy.
At the same time he was a gather and conduit
of information in Britain's best interests. Needless to say Dolls.
Handlers are more than a little shocked and beyond thrilled
with this kid, and Doll's early success only makes him
(28:14):
more confident. The young man who felt rudderless just months
earlier now moves through Washington with the assurance of someone
who believes he can't fail. One of dolls more salacious
tasks for the Irregulars is seducing powerful women in order
to enlist their help. This is a task the young
(28:35):
Doll is very excited about. He's also built for it,
and he uses this trait for his most important seduction
with a woman with the very whimsical, very dolly in name,
Claire Booth. Loose. Dolls first sent to Claire because of
who she's married to. Claire is one half of one
of the most influential power couples of the century. Her
husband is Henry Loose, who builds a media empire that
(28:57):
quite literally shapes what millions of Americans think. He's the
founder of Ready for It, Time Magazine, Fortune Magazine, Life Magazine,
and Sports Illustrated. When these publications begin running pieces with
distinctly anti British undertones, British intelligence is not happy for
a nation fighting for its survival. This isn't just bad press,
it's an existential threat. If American public opinion turns against Britain,
(29:22):
vital Aid could evaporate overnight. The irregulars have to find
a way to change the tenor of Henry's magazines. They're
not sure how to reach Henry, who's notoriously stubborn, but
maybe they can get to his wife. After all, it's
an open secret that the loose marriage is unconventional for
its final twenty eight years. Henry apparently refuses to sleep
with Claire. He says he's in such profound awe of
(29:43):
her that he can't get aroused, a truly tragic condition
that vanishes whenever he's around almost literally any other woman.
Dahl first meets Claire at the New York premiere of
a propaganda film, Eagle Squadron. It's about US airman who
volunteered to fly with the Royal Air Force. The lobby
outside the screening room is packed with DC power players.
(30:04):
Cigar smoke hangs in lazy clouds beneath crystal chandeliers. The
murmur of hush conversations about policy and the war intermingles
with the clink of cocktail glasses. Doll's date, Nancy Carroll,
is a celebrity, once nominated for Best Actress, which tells
you everything about Doll's social currency. Their whispers about the
impropriety of Nancy's obvious infatuation with Dol, who's twelve years
(30:27):
younger than her, But Nancy doesn't seem to care, and
neither does All. He already draws attention with his height
and good looks. He enjoys the gaze of the room,
but doesn't seek it, and his focus is now pulled elsewhere.
Claire Loose is not in a spotlight, but in a
pocket of conversation where men lean down to hear her.
Doll doesn't approach, not yet. He observes how Claire holds court,
(30:51):
teasing some young congressman who said the wrong thing. The
house lights begin to flicker. Dall leads Nancy into the theater,
but as they settle in his eyes remain unclear. Claire
spots his stare, this impossibly handsome, impossibly composed British diplomat.
She gets a chill when she realizes he's not looking away.
He's telling her this look is not a passing glance,
(31:13):
not an accident. Doll has already been briefed on Claire
by the irregulars. For Claire's part, there's no flustered, bashful reaction.
Dall does not return home that night. Later in the week,
when Dall dutifully writes a letter to his mother, he
tells her everything, and I mean everything, even about his
awkward exchange with his landlady after getting home from Claire's.
(31:36):
He writes, quote, I got home at nine am the
next morning. I had to do a lot of talking
to re establish my reputation. Dall's job, of course, isn't
just to have one night stance. If he's going to
change Claire's opinion of the Brits and try to get
her to influence her husband's magazines, it needs to be
a more involved affair. Dall soon realizes focusing only only
(32:00):
effect Claire might have on time and life is shortsighted.
Changing Claire's mind about the Brits will also be hugely helpful,
because what I haven't mentioned yet is that Claire is
incredibly influential in her own right. Claire lives a giant life,
almost as noisy as dolls Lakedall. Claire finds incredible success
in a number of completely different fields. She starts out
(32:22):
as a short story writer. The New York Times finds
her first published volume, Superficial, but praises its quote lovely
festoons of epigrams, and writes, what malice there may be
in these pages has a falinity that is the purest angoring.
I have absolutely no idea what that means either, but
I guess it's not good because it pushes Claire to
pivot away from short stories and to try playwriting. Turns
(32:45):
out she's pretty good at it. In nineteen thirty six,
Claire writes The Women, which runs over six hundred performances
on Broadway. It's a commentary on the pamper lives of
wealthy Manhattan socialites, which Claire is about to become. The
play is adapted to twice for the movies, later with
Annet Betting and Meg Ryan, but first with Joan Crawford.
Speaker 5 (33:05):
Well Girl, looks like it's back to the perfume grounded
for me. And by the way, there's a name for you, ladies,
but it is used in high society outside.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Of a kennel Lake Dahl, Claire bores easily. After her
success with The Women, Claire decides to move into journalism.
She works at Vogue Vanity Fair, then decides to try
war correspondent for Life magazine. Growing restless yet again, Claire
takes her varied experiences in creative writing, journalism and in
the war and decides to run for Congress. Accomplished, beautiful
(33:38):
and wealthy, Claire wins her election, and she's seated on
the powerful House Military Affairs Committee. Here she is years
later on the cartoonishly conservative William F. Buckley Show, speaking
about the subject of men versus women.
Speaker 7 (33:51):
Man's both strength. We're stronger than a woman's strength. It's
that simple, after which, in order to get out from
anger developed a thing called gile Gle was weaponed against tyranny.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
With Claire's seat in Congress, her powerful committee assignment, and
her unique ability to captivate audiences with her writing, plus
her husband's a little publishing empire, you could argue Claire's
about as influential as it gets, which is bad for
the Brits, because she also gives a blistering forty minute
speech on the House floor arguing passionately against cooperation with England.
(34:26):
If Doll can help sway her, he'll be a hero
to the irregulars. Claire is in a very different social
stratosphere than twenty somethingter Doll, who's living off cheese sandwiches
in his tiny walk up apartment. But even though Claire
is already incredibly successful, anne married, and at thirty nine,
thirteen years older than Dol, she falls fro him. Here's
(34:47):
a tall, handsome ex pilot who can talk literature and
theater with her in a way most DC boys cannot.
The relationship is electric, and Doll is soon complaining to
his superiors about Claire's appetite. According to a lawyer who
serves an FDR's administration, again with a name that may
as well be out of a Doll story, creak more Fath,
(35:07):
Doll confides in him that he just can't take another
night with Claire. She's completely worn him out over three
NonStop evenings. He doesn't have anything left. I went to
the ambassador this morning, Doll says, and I said, you know,
it's a great assignment, but I just can't go on.
And according to Doll, the ambassador replied, Rold, did you
ever see the Charles Lotton movie Henry the Eighth Do
(35:29):
you remember the scene of Henry going to the bedroom
with Anne of Cleaves, and he turns and says, the
things I've done for England, Well, that's what you've got
to do. Many years later, Dol will put the things
I've done for England line into Sean Connery's mouth as
James Bond, I don't really believe the British ambassador said
all that to Doll. To me, this feels less like
(35:51):
a real complaint and more like a humble brag. Doll
was trying to figure out what it means to be
a man in this uncertain period. Should he be a
macho playboy or a more sensitive man of letters. He's
twenty six. This is when you figure out who you are,
which isn't easy when you're lying about your identity. It's
almost everyone you meet. The overall effect of Doll's relationship
(36:12):
with Claire is pretty profound. He reports back on all
his intimate, candid conversations with her. He's able to tell
his superiors about internal debates regarding the British that are
happening in Congress and behind closed doors in influential media circles.
He's offering unparalleled insight into American political dynamics, and he
helps the British craft proactive ways to engage the Americans
(36:32):
for help, and pretty soon, wouldn't you know it, Life
magazine is running some pro British stories, framing Britain as
America's most essential ally. But even more importantly, Doll is
in weakending with the President, carrying on an affair with
the congresswoman, and mingling with some of the most powerful
figures in the country. In espionage accesses everything, and doll
(36:56):
has it, but he's still far from achieving all his goals.
He still has a lot of work left to do,
and he's going to have to do it with a
ton of obstacles in his way. While I've mentioned that
pretty much everybody who meets Stalla loves him, the truth
is that when anyone is as successful as Dollars, there
are going to be those who don't appreciate it. A charming, arrogant, handsome,
(37:16):
twenty six year old foreigner actively practicing espionage on behalf
of six in the US and conducting affairs with some
of the most powerful women in the nation, Yeah, that's
going to engender some enemies, for one, the FBI. The
(37:40):
Secret World of Roald 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
wind Hill Studios, with editing, scoring, and sound design by
Mark Henry Phillips, Editing by Ryan Setan, Music by a PM.
(38:03):
Executive producers Nathan Cloke, Karl Welker, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard,
and Aaron Tracy. Additional voice performances and recreation by Mark
Henry Phillips and eleven Laps. 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.
(38:24):
Copyright twenty twenty six Imagine Entertainment, iHeartMedia and Parallax
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