Captain Hardcastle

Captain Hardcastle is the tertiary antagonist in the biography Roald Dahl's Boy. He is one of the masters at Saint Peters' School in Somerset, in Weston-Super-Mare, and he is master of gym, specially football, and also he's in charge of prep.

It's said that Captain Hardcastle hates children with a passion and he has a sort of mental illness named shell shock, caused by explosives in World War One. Captain Hardcastle was a Captain, of course, during the War and he obviously had nothing else to look up to so he kept calling himself "Captain" after the War. He underestimated the intelligence of children, and he often thought they were little insects that should be squashed.

Captain Hardcastle, of course, was one of the inspirations for Agatha Trunchbull.

In his time at school, Roald Dahl was an enemy of Captain Hardcastle, for many reasons: he was almost as tall as him and Hardcastle thought he was too big for his boots, Hardcastle taught Latin and Dahl hated it, and he often thought Dahl was smirking when he was just laughing. Captain Hardcastle was a strict disciplinarian and he took no nonsense from anyone.

He would often insult Dahl as much as he could sometimes deliberately forgetting his name. Another time, he picked on a boy named Braithwaite when his lip was swelling up due to a wasp sting, and acted like he couldn't understand what Braithwaite was saying.

Captain Hardcastle was a merciless tyrant, and he crossed the Moral Event Horizon when he pounced on Dahl when he was asking to borrow a pen nib from Dobson, another student. Hardcastle pounced on Dahl and said he was cheating, and lying, and he sentenced him to a caning after a shouting match. Hardcastle told the Headmaster that Dahl was caught lying in class. Captain Hardcastle not only sentenced Dahl to the torture, but to make him sound more evil, he actually stood in the staff room with the door wide open so he could hear the cane hitting Dahl and so Hardcastle could laugh at each stroke.