Hands off Roald Dahl! French publisher says Dahl's novels will remain intact.

 Author Roald Dahl

Viva La France. The UK publisher Puffin have hired 'sensitivity readers' to delete language deemed offensive in the books of Roald Dahl. The French publishers Gallimard said no changes would be made to the author's children books in France and the original text would "remain intact." Puffin said its overhaul of the books was aimed at bringing them into the modern world.

In the new English version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the word 'ugly' and 'fat' used to describe the greedy Augustus Gloop, is replaced by the word 'enormous' and the Oompa-Loompas are gender neutral. In the French version, Gloop remains "a hippopotamus...enormous...like a fat pig" and the Oompa-Loompas are described as men who wear "deer skins "

Antoine Cheron, a lawyer specializing in author's rights said it was not illegal in France to change a dead author's works, but it was "dangerous for culture." "How far back should we go?" Cheron said. "Baudelaire? Voltaire? The Bible? If books are changed in this way they are not the original works. It is not far off censorship. This seems to be an attack on artistic creation and Freedom of expression."

The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has criticized the 'airbrushing' of Roald Dahl's classics by Puffin, saying "don't 'gobblefunk' around with words", a word that was used by Dahl in his children's book the Big Friendly Giant to denote the practice of playing around with language. Gobblefunk, is what we might call a 'nonce word' that like Lewis Carroll’s 'jabberwocky', is used for a single occasion. The word 'nonce' has now acquired a different meaning to many English people who think that it refers to a child sex abuser. The word 'gay' has also lost its original meaning.

I think that Antoine Cheron makes a very valid point. Are we going to finish up seeing 'sensitivity readers' scouring over and 'airbrushing' the works of Dickens, Waugh, Trollope, Orwell and Enid Blyton? They're bound to find something objectionable. I'm currently reading a novel by Joseph Conrad called Victory. In his novel, Conrad refers to a "Big Buck Nigger"and says "Wang was not a common coolie " Yes, they are very offensive words, but Conrad was a man of his time and not of our times. What right have we got to mess about with his words by trying to turn the clock back and impose a modern view of the world on him?