The sex-life of young Roald Dahl: How author had 'a parade of women' while he was a spy in America during the war



Roald Dahl pictured when he was a dashing RAF fighter pilot

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG are still some of the most popular children's stories across the world.

But a new biography which reveals the sexual exploits of author Roald Dahl, while he was a British spy in America during the war, is certainly not suitable bed-time reading for his younger fans.

The new biography, by American journalist Jennet Conant, draws on previously unpublished Dahl letters and other documents, and is a comprehensive account of the authors wartime exploits as a RAF attache.

Among his conquests were, Millicent Rogers, heiress to a Standard Oil fortune and Clare Boothe Luce, a right-wing congresswoman and sex-mad wife of the publisher of Time magazine.

Dahl once told friends that Boothe Luce, who was 13 years older, had left him 'all f***** out' after spending three nights in bed with her.



In the biography, to be published in Britain on September 9, Conant writes:



'Dahl’s superiors watched his rake’s progress with grudging admiration.

“A certain amount of hanky-panky was condoned, especially when it was for a good cause.'

Dahl ended up in the Washington Embassy in 1942 after getting injured while training as an RAF pilot and fighting in the Middle East.

He became friends with Charles Marsh, a Texan newspaper magnate and Winston Churchill fan.



Clare Boothe Luce left Roald Dahl exhausted after they spent three nights together

It was Marsh’s family that provided Conant with letters the two men wrote to each other during the war.

His daughter Antoinette Marsh Haskell said: 'I think he slept with everybody on the east and west coasts that [was worth] more than $50,000 a year.



'Roald was a real charmer when he wanted to be. He was great fun to be around, he was always doing tricks and playing crazy practical jokes.

'There was a parade of women.'

At one point he turned up at the Marshes’ home with a woman said to be General Dwight Eisenhower’s mistress.



'I think he liked to show them off to my father,' Antoinette says.



The biograpy describes a British embassy dinner, when Dahl was placed deliberately next to Boothe Luce, whose anticolonial opinions and dislike of Churchill worried British officials.

His mission was to keep close to Boothe Luce and he succeeded admirably.



Dahl later claimed to have asked his superiors to take him off the assignment because of her sexual exploits but he was told to close his eyes and think of England.