The Orwell Foundation has let George Orwell down

George Orwell would not have been surprised by the brouhaha surrounding Kate Clanchy. Two years ago, Clanchy published Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, a non-fiction book about teaching poetry to disadvantaged schoolchildren which was well-received. Earlier this month a group of offence archaeologists on social media started trawling through it for ‘problematic’ passages and from their point of view it was as if they’d discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. Clanchy had described an Afghan refugee as having ‘almond-shaped eyes’, another child as having ‘chocolate–coloured skin’ and nicknamed a third ‘African Jonathan’. She had also labelled two autistic children ‘unselfconsciously odd’ and ‘jarring company’.

Before long, a cry of ‘Burn the witch’ was echoing across Twitter and on Friday Clanchy issued a statement explaining how ‘grateful’ she was ‘to those who took the time to challenge my writing’. This was followed by a series of statements from Picador, her publisher, not only expressing their gratitude for ‘the insights’ provided by the witchfinder generals, but apologising for the ‘hurt’ they’d caused. The book would now be ‘updated’ in consultation with ‘an appropriate group of specialist readers’, i.e. the pitchfork-wielding mob.

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Gareth Roberts

Have I Got News for You is a sad, unfunny spectacle

So far, so predictable. As Orwell wrote in the unpublished preface to Animal Farm: ‘The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.’ At any given moment, he said, a body of ideas holds sway in the literary world and it is just assumed that all right–thinking people will accept them without question. The state plays no part in enforcing this orthodoxy; rather, it is entirely policed by the literary intelligentsia. If asked whether they believe in free speech, these intellectuals will profess that of course they do — what a ridiculous question.