Puffin publishers
Sensitivity policing
Forgive me if I have a minor rant this week. Methinks the world has gone mad.
Who hasn’t enjoyed the wonderfully vivid creativity of Raold Dahl? Indeed, he’s been acclaimed as one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century. More than 250 million copies of his 49 published books have sold worldwide, and some were turned into much-loved films. But he was a provocative author writing in the latter half of the last century, before the political correctness we know today took off; he’s been dead for 33 years.
So, how come that, having raked in a fortune from one of their most famous clients, his publisher, Puffin, working with the Raold Dahl Story Company, have now decided they must radically alter the very feel of his books in subsequent editions lest they upset those with issues – body image, mental health, racial etc – or any other political niceties relating to inclusivity or accessibility? 
They’ve drafted in a team of sensitivity readers to comb through the books for anything which might possibly cause offence, and in so doing have watered down the sheer effectiveness of Dahl’s prose, turning the vibrant language into the banal. I’m offended on behalf of the great writer himself. Imagine that great mind slogging away for huge tracts of time and exhausting his mental energy choosing exactly the right word, precisely the degree of nastiness, conjuring up shiveringly mesmerising and memorable characters, in order best to captivate his young readers, only to have those with a tiny fraction of his imagination and linguistic skill, mangle his text into mediocrity!
OK, OK, it has been necessary in the past to adapt his writing where it’s been genuinely offensive – anti-Semitic, misogynistic, outright racist – I accept that. And indeed, he himself changed some of his more debatable descriptors. By all means add riders and disclaimers and facilitate and promote healthy discussion on the debatable language, but this latest drive is change on a different scale. It is distorting the whole feel of his dark humour and spikily irreverent writing, the rebellion and mischievousness that are part of his particular style.
It’s about dumbing down colourful and amusing descriptors and grotesque features supposedly to conform to the modern sensibilities of a select band of woke-obsessives. Hundreds of changes have been made. Hundreds! A few examples 
must suffice:
‘fat’ becomes ‘enormous’
‘no higher than my knee’ becomes ‘small’
‘fearful ugliness’ becomes ‘ugliness’
‘white with fear’ becomes ‘quite pale’
‘a chambermaid’ become ‘a cleaner’
‘a supermarket cashier’ becomes ‘a top scientist’
an earthworm can no longer have ‘lovely pink skin’
neither animals nor machines can be described as ‘black’
tortoises can no longer come from ‘North Africa’
male characters have had a gender transplant
Rudyard Kipling has been superceded by Jane Austen …
… you’ll have got the point by now. It’s insulting. It’s a massacre.
Where will it all end? What value is there in a uniquely creative mind or fabulously inventive vocabulary? Watch out David Walliams … JK Rowling … Beatrix Potter … Shakespeare … all creators everywhere of mean-minded characters and sinister plots and devious motives.
I’d personally rather question the moral ugliness of those so obsessed with money-grabbing that they will countenance deliberately diluting the very power of this man’s genius, and yet somehow continue to fill their own coffers at the same time as bringing his name into disrepute.
Rant over.