One day in August 1983 I was asked by the editor of the New Statesman to interview Roald Dahl.
The author of Willy Wonka had launched a tirade against Israel in a book review that was so vehement that it amounted to anti-Semitism, and the magazine wanted to see if he really believed in the racism he was promulgating.
The assumption was that he would back away from his extremist position and that the story might run into a few paragraphs in the next edition. Hence the decision to hand the task over to me, at 24 the youngest member of staff at the magazine.
And so one morning at 10.30am, feeling clearly nervous, I picked up the phone to call the man described as ‘the most popular children’s author since Enid Blyton’.
My call was initially answered by someone else and after I introduced myself I heard them say to Dahl: ‘There’s a journalist for you called Mike Coren from the New Statesman.’
Roald Dahl wrote a review for the magazine The Literary Review of a book called God Cried, an account of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which was considered anti-Semitic.
Author, columnist and priest Michael Coren interviewed Roald Dahl for The New Statesman in August 1983
I heard Dahl say, ‘Mike Cohen? What?!’ He was then corrected.
I thought I could detect something in his voice that bothered me. No, I told myself, you’re being ridiculous. As I would discover over the next 15 to 20 minutes, I certainly wasn’t.
Rather than retract his comments, the author of blockbusters such as James And The Giant Peach and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory has doubled down on his statements, giving me quotes so incendiary that – forty years later – they will play a role in a new play to be performed at London’s Royal Court Theater in the autumn.
In the play, called Giant, Dahl and his family meet with his Jewish publisher to deal with the fallout from his disgusting review in the Literary Review.
Of course, when I called him that day, I had no idea that our exchange would still be talked about decades later.
If I expected him to apologize for some of what he wrote, or at least qualify the harshness and inaccurate generalizations, I would have been quickly disappointed. The opposite happened.
In his review of the book God Cried, an account of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, for the magazine The Literary Review, Dahl wrote of “a race of people” who had “transitioned so quickly from victims to barbaric murderers.”
In his review, Dahl said the US was “so utterly dominated by the major Jewish financial institutions” that “they dare not defy Israel” (Stock Image)
He also wrote that the US was “so utterly dominated by the major Jewish financial institutions” that “they dare not defy Israel.”
When I raised the import of these observations with the author, he was polite—not unfriendly—and spoke slowly and deliberately.
But it was as if I had opened the doors to a dark, deep hatred that had been waiting for years to express itself.
‘There is a quality in the Jewish character that breeds hostility. Maybe it’s some kind of lack of generosity toward non-Jews,” he said, adding, “I mean, there’s always a reason why ‘anti-anything’ pops up somewhere. Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just bully them.’
When he spoke of the “hostile quality of Jewish character,” I wasn’t even sure I heard him correctly. I stopped him and asked if he meant what he said. Could I have perhaps misheard him?
No, he said, I was right. No regrets, no shame.
Although I was sure that a man of his intelligence and worldliness would have known that “Coren” could be a Jewish name, I told him that three of my grandparents were Jewish.
I’ve never forgotten his reaction, because it wasn’t there.
He paused for a moment, having clearly heard what I had said, and then calmly continued his racist nastiness as if nothing had happened.
He told me that he had fought in World War II and that he and his friends had never seen Jewish soldiers.
I responded again. I told him that my own grandfather had spent four years on the front lines in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, had been regularly promoted and had won countless medals.
I added that hundreds of thousands of Jewish men had served in the British, American, Soviet and other Allied armies and were, in any case, overrepresented in combat roles and heroic deeds.
This time I heard him mumble something, either to himself or to someone else in the room. He answered me as if he was mid-sentence and all I heard was ‘stay together’.
I asked him if he wanted to say anything else. Once again he was disarmingly courteous. ‘No thank you, I think I’ve made myself very clear. Bye.’ And that was it.
When the conversation ended, I felt strangely numb and confused. As young and inexperienced as I was, I think I might have even been shaking. How could a man who wrote with so much genius, so much empathy for the oppressed, and so much concern for the difference between right and wrong, be so vile and arrogant in his racism, and so indifferent and cruel to me?
His friends wondered if Dahl was going through a breakdown or crisis. One of them said to me, “Oh, I’m sure he didn’t mean it.” This was nonsense.
Years later, Dahl told another interviewer, “I’m definitely anti-Israel, and I’ve become anti-Semitic. It’s the same old thing: we all know about Jews and the rest of it. There are no non-Jewish publishers anywhere, they control the media – very smart thing to do – that’s why the President of the United States has to sell all this stuff to Israel.”
So much for ‘not meaning it’.
A new play called Giant will be performed at London’s Royal Court Theater in the autumn, exploring Dahl’s anti-Semitism.
I wrote my article and repeated what Dahl had said. The general reaction surprised me. Although this was a time before social media and online hysteria, there was still quite a bit of outrage over Dahl’s statements. But then there were the others – who didn’t care, who said I shouldn’t have written the article, or who even supported his views.
I decided to call Dahl again to discuss the latest fuss, but he wouldn’t talk to me. So I wrote to him, asking if he wanted to say something. I think I still wanted it to go away. He replied with the shortest letter I had ever received. All it said was ‘No’. It was unsigned: perhaps he thought I would sell his autograph.
In the years that followed, his fame would of course only increase and since his death in 1990, his books have been adapted into films year after year.
In 2021, Netflix bought Dahl’s entire catalog for around £370 million and a film called Wonka, the ‘origin story’ of his 1964 book Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, released late last year, has grossed £490 million at the box office . It seems ‘uncancelable’ in every respect.
The man’s works seem to be growing in popularity, which begs the question: can the author and his writings be separated? That’s something I struggled with in 1983 and still struggle with today.
My wife and I read Dahl’s stories to our four children, and I’m sure they will too.
I would never want to see Dahl’s books taken off the shelves. But I would like people to be more sensitive to those, like me, who are so deeply hurt by someone who hates Jews because they are Jews, who enjoys spouting lies and racism without any fear of the consequences.
Michael Coren is an Anglican priest in Canada and the author of 18 books. His latest work is The Rebel Christ.