The rewriting of Roald Dahl is an act of cultural vandalism

The vandals have come for Roald Dahl. His books for children are to be cleansed of their ‘offensive’ content. Sensitivity readers – what we used to call censors – have been employed to pore over his works and expurgate any word or passage that might hurt a kid’s feelings. If you weren’t worried about cancel culture before, surely this egregious assault on some of the best-known children’s books of the modern era, this posthumous purging of an author’s output, will change your mind.

Dahl is being well and truly Ministry of Truthed. Puffin essentially tasked the sensitivity readers with morally improving his stories so that no child will ever feel affronted by their fruity, judgemental language. Some of the changes are crazy. Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is no longer ‘fat’ – he’s ‘enormous’. Aunt Sponge in James and the Giant Peach is no longer ‘terrifically fat’ and ‘tremendously flabby’ – she’s just ‘a nasty old brute’ who deserves to be ‘squashed by fruit’.