Snake

A darkly meticulous craftsman who recoiled from the ordinary.

Roald Dahl was intensely private, obsessive about his writing ritual — famously retreating to his isolated garden hut in Gipsy House to work in near-total solitude. Beneath the whimsical surface of his children's stories lay a vicious, often disturbing wit, most visible in his adult fiction and his documented sharp tongue in personal life. He kept the world at arm's length, was frequently misunderstood or controversial, and poured everything into the meticulous craft of his stories — classic snake traits.