Roald Dahl and the limits of cancel culture

Roald Dahl was a proud antisemite but if it’s real courage you’re after, look to his family who, a mere 30 years after his death, have finally acknowledged that the children’s author wasn’t keen on the Jews.

The Sunday Times reports that the family ‘recently met for the first time in several years to discuss the problem and published a discreet apology for his racism on his website’. In the statement, buried deep on the official Roald Dahl website, his family ‘deeply apologise for the lasting and understandable hurt caused by some of Roald Dahl’s statements’, though they make no mention of what these ‘prejudiced remarks’ were or to whom they were directed. Indeed, as the Sunday Times reports, the statement was ‘never displayed prominently, or sent to the media or Jewish groups’. It sounds distinctly like an apology to be cited rather than seen.

Of course, had they gone into detail, there would be rather a lot to apologise for.