Will Ian McEwan ever get over Brexit?

‘Screw the lot of them.’ Ian McEwan’s blunt advice to young authors having to deal with ‘sensitivity readers’ had me punching the air. At last, a bona fide national treasure prepared to take on the performative offence-taking that has Britain’s publishing industry in its censorious grip. Speaking in Paris ahead of the publication of the French edition of his latest novel, Lessons, McEwan urged authors to ‘be brave’.

Sensitivity readers, unheard of a decade ago, are now all the rage. Individuals with a superior capacity to detect offence comb through an author’s manuscript highlighting anything they consider dodgy. Whether their attention is caught by a two-word description of a character or an entire subplot, authors are expected to humbly acquiesce and remove offending material.

The process hit the headlines back in 2021 when author Kate Clanchy objected to her award-winning memoir Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me being subjected to post-publication sensitivity-reading.