Do we like Roald Dahl?
Our score: 2 out of 10. Real harm in his own recorded words about Jewish people, with a genuine public-health good deed alongside, but not enough to lift it.
Roald Dahl wrote The Witches and a shelf of other kids' favourites, and for decades he was treated as a national treasure. The thing that now defines the argument about him is a 1983 row, which is exactly where the play Giant starts: Dahl at his desk correcting proofs of The Witches while a review he has just written blows up around him.
The row began with a review of a photo book about Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. In it, he referred to “those powerful American Jewish bankers”, according to a 1990 letter from Anti-Defamation League head Abraham Foxman. In a New Statesman interview the same year he was quoted saying “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity.”
The harm check is straightforward, because it's mostly his own words. Months before he died in 1990 he told The Independent: “I am certainly anti-Israel, and I have become anti-Semitic.” Criticising a government is one thing; the remarks about Jewish people are the problem. A Nation columnist writes that he never repudiated any of it. I haven't sourced anything on how he treated other groups, so that's left out.
His family has apologised, and that matters, but it isn't his apology. In December 2020 the Dahl family and the Roald Dahl Story Company said they “deeply apologise for the lasting and understandable hurt” caused by some of his statements, calling the remarks “incomprehensible to us”. The statement sat in an obscure corner of his official website until The Sunday Times pointed it out, which didn't help.
Giant, by Mark Rosenblatt, has made it hot again. Set in 1983, it follows his publishers trying to contain the fallout while he digs in. Where you land on whether to keep reading the books while knowing the man is up to you; this page just reports the record.
So the nice test is a close call, not a pass or a fail: a genuine public-health service on one side, hurtful and recorded words about Jewish people on the other. Beloved books don't cancel the second part. Fail on harm, mixed on nice.