At the age of twenty-six Donald Sturrock was a young, ambitious television director waiting for his big break. Working at the BBC at the time, he was set the task of creating an item for Bookmark, a weekly series that looked at the lives and work of well-known writers. Sturrock decided to focus on the children’s novelist, Roald Dahl. He “was intrigued to find that nobody had ever made a film about him before, although he was 69 and very famous”. He didn’t have to approach Dahl’s agent, finding it surprisingly simple to contact the writer “The world wasn’t like that 30 years ago, it was much more direct and personal”. He scanned the telephone directories “and believe it or not, Dahl R, Gypsy House, Buckinghamshire, with his phone number” was printed. He called it and Dahl “answered the phone, No secretary!” and they arranged a meeting. Little did he know that one meeting would change the course of his life.  Now fifty-five, Sturrock classes himself as the “world expert” of Roald Dahl, having become very close friends with the author and going onto write his biography, “Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl”.

 

Sturrock got on so well with the writer that he got an exclusive viewing of his infamous writing hut the first day they met. “I thought I was probably one of the first people to see it who weren’t family or friends.” He says, “Nobody else was ever allowed into clean and it was covered in 20 years of cigarette ends.”

 

The biographer was given little encouragement to focus on Roald Dahl as a result of the writer’s reputation. The producer of the programme told him “He’s a total bastard and… the chances of you persuading him to take part are virtually zero- so good luck”. The Guardian reported that “Roald Dahl was an absolute sod” and that Sturrock had portrayed him as more charming than he actually was. Questioning him on this subject, he responded “I think the reputation an ‘absolute sod’ is totally undeserved… I saw him be extraordinarily kind, extraordinarily generous”, such as sending cheques to children that wrote to him with their problems. However he did reveal that he had “rather a naughty sense of humour that could verge on cruel”.

 

Sturrock was invited to Hollywood to script write on a salary that a BBC director could only dream of. However, he found it a very tough industry and like many his journey was cut short.

 

He not only writes but sees himself as “more of a frustrated musician than anything else.” He has gone on to work on operas including Little Red Riding Hood (1995) and The Golden Ticket (2010). Talking about his career, he says “you tend to meet an awful lot of interesting people along the way.”

 

Grateful for the freedom and enjoyment he gets from his career, Sturrock says, “I never find myself feeling this is a drudge, or I’m anyone else’s slave”.  He works on many strange and wonderful things, “I sometimes have to pinch myself”. Examining a photograph (below) taken when he was directing on the set of Little Red Riding Hood opera, he says “the feeling when that photograph was taken, I was looking at these things…they were looking up at me and I thought this is so gloriously crazy and mad. Here I am giving directions to pigs.”