About the Museum

Our founding objective as a charity is to further the education of the public in the art of literature and creativity, by running a museum and literature centre based on the works of Roald Dahl.

Since the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre opened our doors in 2005, we have used the example of Roald Dahl’s creative craft to show that what he did, YOU can do too. More than a million people have visited the Museum to date, including an average of 10,000 schoolchildren every year.

We think that making stories is part of what makes us human, and everyone is a storymaker. We use our collection and location – Roald Dahl’s archive, in the village where he found inspiration in the everyday – to help our visitors unlock the stories we all have inside.

We do this through our school programme, our public offer of activities at the Museum, and through online learning sessions that can be experienced in classrooms anywhere.

As an independent organisation we receive no regular public funding. We earn most of what we need to operate through tickets and gift shop sales. We have been generously supported by the Dahl family, although no member of the family is involved in running the Museum today.

We work with but are separate from the Roald Dahl Story Company which owns the rights to Roald Dahl’s stories and characters.

Roald Dahl’s creative legacy at the Roald Dahl Museum

Millions of people read Roald Dahl’s books every year and find something joyous in the words he wrote; we see this enthusiasm in our visitors. At the Museum, in Roald Dahl’s archive, we care for all the versions of the stories, from the earliest drafts to finished books. We believe Roald Dahl’s creative legacy is an important part of the heritage of English literature, but important does not mean flawless.

In our Museum, we shine a light on the elements of Dahl’s life that strongly link to his creative craft, because exploring and encouraging creativity is our purpose as a charity. We do not seek to celebrate Roald Dahl as a flawless person.

In his life, Roald Dahl was a contradictory person. He could be kind; he often helped people, donated to charity, and contributed to medical science. However, there are also recorded incidents of him being very unkind and worse, including writing and saying antisemitic things about Jewish people.

We fully support the apology made by the Dahl family and Roald Dahl Story Company for his racist views about Jewish people.

 “The Dahl family and the Roald Dahl Story Company deeply apologise for the lasting and understandable hurt caused by Roald Dahl’s antisemitic statements. Those prejudiced remarks are incomprehensible to us and stand in marked contrast to the man we knew and to the values at the heart of Roald Dahl’s stories, which have positively impacted young people for generations. We hope that, just as he did at his best, at his absolute worst, Roald Dahl can help remind us of the lasting impact of words.”

Roald Dahl Story Company Apology

The Roald Dahl Museum condemns all racism, including antisemitism, directed at any group or individual. We are committed to being more welcoming, inclusive, diverse, and equitable in all aspects of our work.

We do not repeat what Dahl said and wrote about Jewish people publicly, but we do keep a record of it in the Museum’s collection, so it is not forgotten.