This past month I found myself delving into biographies of vastly diverse individuals who have influenced large populations at very different times in history. One is Roald Dahl, famed author of wonderful children’s books and adult stories. The other is ruler Catherine II of Russia, otherwise known as Catherine the Great. 

Roald Dahl: Storyteller, by Donald Sturrock, is a very thorough and engaging modern biography about a very eccentric man who started out writing short, dark, and deeply twisted stories for adults, only to find his métier in penning books for children. Dahl, whose parents were Norwegian, grew up in Wales and England as the son of a widowed mother. Initially working for Shell Oil, he joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) after WWII began. Crashing in North Africa, he recuperated and joined the diplomatic corps as an air attaché in Washington, DC. 

His stories about the imaginary “gremlins” who were legendary in the RAF for creating problems in aircraft mechanics gained attention from not only Walt Disney, who considered making the story into a movie, but also Eleanor Roosevelt, whose attention Dahl gained from his writings. Dahl moved into a heady circle of high-ranking politicians, diplomats, and other luminaries in Washington, DC, and New York City. As an unusually tall (6’5”), attractive, and unusual British diplomat, he attracted a great deal of attention from women. Dahl enjoyed his time in the United States as a result, and took part in a number of efforts to persuade the United States to join the war. 

Upon returning to England, Dahl rejoined his family and took on a more insular, countrified life. He continued to pen the occasional well-acclaimed, dark adult story for such publications as The New Yorker. Upon returning to the United States, in 1953 he eventually met and decided to marry Patricia Neal, the actress who eventually won an Oscar for her role in the Paul Newman drama Hud. They stayed together through the street accident that caused their son, Theo, head trauma, and the illness that took their daughter, Olivia, at age seven. When Neal herself had a stroke, Dahl made her undertake a vanguard regimen of rehabilitation, which helped her regain many lost faculties. They eventually divorced. Later this radical course of action was later seen as the necessary means for helping many stroke victims. 

In the mean time, Dahl had taken the advice of his literary agent, who had been urging him for years to write children’s stories. His first, James and the Giant Peach, was published in 1961. A success, this first children’s endeavor spurred him on to keep tapping into his mischievous, child-like spirit. Eventually penning such classics as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, and Danny, Champion of the World. Dahl was always able remember himself as a small, impish boy, and the world is the luckier for it. This biography works because, among other things, it effectively examines the way an unusual adult could regress so amusingly and effectively to his childhood self. 

Peter K. Massie’s Catherine the Great is currently on bestseller charts as the story of the empress who was, other than Peter the Great, the most effective royal autocratic ruler in imperial Russia. Massie does an excellent job in encapsulating Catherine II’s achievements in as few words as possible. A princess from a small German state, the Sophia Augusta Fredericka from Anhalt-Zerbst left in 1744 with her mother for Russia at the age of 14 as the betrothed to the Grand Duke Peter from Holstein, heir to the Russian throne and nephew to the current empress. After converting to the Russian Orthodox faith, Sophia was renamed Catherine and assumed the title of archduchess after marrying Peter in 1745. While assimilating into the Russian court of Empress Elizabeth, the intellectually bright and increasingly sophisticated Catherine read many books and learned how to navigate the tricky shoals of a fickle and power-hungry imperial court. 

In marriage to the future Peter III, Catherine had to bring all of her diplomatic skills and kindness to bear. A difficult, socially retarded being, Peter had no interest in his wife other than complaining to her. Peter disliked Russia and loved Prussia, whose ruler, Frederick II, was his idol. He immediately called off Russia’s war with Prussia as soon as he became Tsar when Empress Elizabeth died. He greatly angered Russians with his dislike for their faith, their language, their army, and their national cause, which paved the way for Catherine’s succession.

Catherine’s third lover, Gregory Orlov, and his four brothers helped organize the military power needed to overthrow her juvenile, problematic husband, who wanted to get rid of her. Catherine took power in 1764 as Empress Catherine II, popular with the Russian people, religious hierarchy, and the military. Catherine became a ruler not only in name, rising at 6 am every morning for fifteen-hour days that included all matters of state that could not be delegated. She was a very well-educated, even-tempered ruler, who brought eighteenth-century Enlightenment ideals to autocracy and corresponded with such Enlightenment figures as Voltaire and Diderot.

This book enumerates her achievements, such as her efforts to begin the huge art collection now housed in the Hermitage Museum on the Neva River. In addition, it describes ancillary history such as the French Revolution and its effect on Catherine, who retreated from some youthful Enlightenment ideals through fear of revolutionaries and Jacobins. By the time she died of a stroke in 1796, Catherine expanded Russian territory both in the former area of Poland and in regions near the Black Sea, expanding Peter the Great’s Navy by gaining Russia ports on the Black Sea. According to Massie, she was working to achieve her goals in the fields of philosophy, literature, education, art and architecture not primarily to please her vanity, but mostly to add to Russia’s value and glory. This biography would be a worthwhile addition to any introductory Russian History class. It is substantial, but very readable, human, and worth your time.