Boy: Tales of Childhood

Dahl is sent to a boarding school called St. Peters at the age of nine. He travels with his mother from the Cardiff Docks to Weston-super-Mare across the Bristol Channel, where the English school is located. He takes with him a tuckbox (a wooden chest containing his clothing and possessions) engraved with his name.

Dahl’s new headmaster encourages Dahl’s mother not to linger with her son, so she leaves. Dahl, who has never been away from his family, begins to cry.

Every week, the boys must sit and write a letter home to their parents. This is a practice that Dahl faithfully maintains; he writes to his mother for the rest of her life, including from Kenya, Egypt, and Iraq during the war when he is stationed there with the Royal Air Force. He signs his letters Boy,” the nickname that he was given as his mother’s only son.

The headmaster peers over the boys’ shoulders as they write, ostensibly checking their spelling and grammar. Dahl suggests that he is actually checking whether the boys are writing anything critical about the school.