Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984) is an autobiography written by British writer Roald Dahl. This book describes his life from early childhood until leaving school, focusing on living conditions in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s, the public school system at the time, and how his childhood experiences led him to writing children's books as a career. It concludes with his first job, working for Royal Dutch Shell. His life story continues in the book Going Solo. An expanded edition titled More About Boy was published in 2008, featuring the full original text and illustrations with additional stories, letters, and photographs. Key points in the story Dahl's ancestry Roald Dahl's father Harald Dahl and mother Sofie Hesselberg were Norwegians who emigrated to Wales before World War I, and settled in Cardiff. Harald and his brother Oscar, who were born in the 1860s, split up and went their separate ways after deciding that a better future lay before them outside their native Norway. Oscar headed to La Rochelle, France. Harald had suffered an unfortunate accident as a teenager in the late 1870s, breaking his left arm by fixing the ceiling tiles of the family home and then falling off the ladder. A doctor was summoned, but was drunk on arrival and mistook the fractured arm for a dislocated shoulder. The doctor's attempt to relocate the shoulder failed, causing Harald to scream in agony. Harald's mother was a visitor at Harald's hospital room and viewed the scene in shock. By the time she told the doctors to stop, Harald's arm was very damaged. The doctors realised they had made a mistake, and the only way to not keep him in that condition was to amputate his left arm. Harald lived with one arm for the rest of his life, but he did not let the lack of a second arm hinder him; even fashioning a special sharpened fork to aid in eating, his only serious limitation being his inability to cut the top off a boiled egg. Harald Dahl had two children by his first wife, Marie, who died shortly after the birth of their second child. He then married Sofie Magdalene Hesselberg, Roald's mother. Harald was more than 20 years older than Sofie; he was born in 1863 and she was born in 1885. By the time Roald Dahl was born in 1916, his father was 53 years old. Family tragedy