Who inspired Roald Dahl?

Ever since his first children’s book, The Gremlins, was published in 1943, Roald Dahl has been a smash hit with children the world over. Surviving the test of time, Dahl's works continue to entertain and delight. His books are still made into movies, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1971, 2005) and The BFG (2016). Dahl's appeal to children is tied up with his own biggest inspiration: children and their psyche.
One of the biggest reasons children love Dahl’s writings is that he is “always on the children’s side,” in the words of fellow author Michael Rosen. Dahl, a giant of a man himself, allied himself with the smallest of human beings: that’s why his books show naughty children outwitting mean, overbearing adults. Dahl’s own childhood, especially at school, was not happy, filled with strict, oppressive teachers who caned and flogged him. This seeded in Dahl a deep-seated loathing for authority figures and bossy adults, which, no doubt, is reflected in characters such as Miss Trunchbull from Matilda (1988). Dahl understood the powerlessness of children who feel dwarfed in an adult world—and how they use their dark, mischievous imagination to wrest some power back. In his books, children are often orphans or abandoned by their parents, and they are left to their own wicked, funny devices to defeat the adult world.
While children were Dahl’s biggest influence, he also drew inspiration from his own vividly-remembered childhood. For instance, the plot of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1972) was inspired by his time in the Repton school, close to the factory of chocolate behemoth Cadbury's, which often tested their new flavors on the schoolchildren. After he became a father, Dahl found renewed inspiration in his son and four daughters: his first children’s book was written after his first child was born. Thus, fatherhood helped Dahl reconnect with his own childish ingenuity. Most of his children’s books started off as bedtime stories he made up for his children, as in the case of James and the Giant Peach (1961), which was based on stories Dahl told to daughters Tessa and Olivia. His children and grandchildren also routinely pop up in his books, like we see in The BFG (1982), whose hero Dahl named "Sophie" after his young granddaughter.
Apart from children, a fellow writer who influenced Dahl in an unexpected way was the poet Dylan Thomas. Thomas, a Welshman like Dahl, had a dramatically different writing style from Dahl. For one, he wrote poetry for grown-ups, and his rousing, romantic poetry is a far cry from the oompa-loompas and childchewers of Dahl’s fecund imagination. But Thomas’s words still inspired Dahl, showing us that there is no linear path between inspiration and its manifestation. Writers might be influenced by a beautiful rose, for instance, but it may show up as a marauding rhinoceros in their writing!
Words apart, Thomas's writing practice influenced Dahl even more profoundly. Few people know that Dahl’s famed “writing hut” was a close replica of Thomas’s writing den. Dahl visited Thomas’s hut in the 1950s and found it so inspiring that he decided to build a similar one for himself in his garden. Starting with James and the Giant Peach, all of Dahl’s great works were written in his hut. In an interview to the BBC, Dahl thus described his sanctuary:

A little hut, curtains drawn so I don't see the squirrels up in the apple trees in the orchard. The light on, right away from the house, no vacuum cleaners, nothing. ... When I am in this place it is my little nest. My womb.

What I've discussed here are just a few examples of people and things that inspired Dahl. If you'd like to know more about his childhood influences and life, the autobiographical Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984) is a great starting point!
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14880441

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-37342271

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/children_sbookreviews/9527780/Roald-Dahl-always-cheered-on-the-children.html

The very wonderful British writer Roald Dahl is certainly one of the most influential writers of his era. Yet, like any artist, he is in part indebted to his own influences. One certain influence of Dahl's work is Rudyard Kipling, author of the famous Jungle Book, who often wrote fantastical stories about animals. Dahl, of course, would go on to also write about animals as well as bugs. Charles Dickens was also a major influence, with Dahl heavily impersonating Dickens's ability to craft zany, perfect names. Interestingly, Dahl's famous character Matilda was inspired, in part, by the Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Matilda takes to teaching herself to read at quite an early age, while Mozart began composing music at a similarly early age.
Perhaps even more than these two prolific writers and this one prolific composer, Dahl was influenced heavily by his own life and the people in it. Whether reminiscing on his childhood memories of visiting the candy shop for inspiration on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or remembering a massive old tree in his neighborhood for inspiration for the setting of Fantastic Mr. Fox, Dahl was frequently looking upon life experiences to write his own work. Most importantly, however, Dahl himself cites his own children as his greatest inspirations, for his writing stemmed primarily from telling them bedtime stories.