There is what can only be described as a war of words going on here in the UK regarding Roald Dahl and his works.  The Publisher, Puffin Books, has decided to appoint Sensitivity persons (!) and given them licence to edit Mr Dahl’s words as they see fit, chopping, altering and adding where necessary to bring his books in line with contemporary sensibilities!  So a few examples are :

Ladies & Gentleman become Folks    /   Chambermaid becomes cleaner   /  Handbags becomes bags (!)  / This woman’s mad becomes This woman is not in her right mind.

There are a million other changes but you can probably see from the above they are just silly.  My opinion on this is that they are putting adult neurosis of words, descriptions, actions onto children and yet if a child was asked about these words they would have no problem at all about it! 

I suppose that if these publishers want to be politically correct then new Authors need to produce books with politically correct words in, however you must not go back and re-write works that have been around for ever.

It is the same as the people who want to re-write history because they do not like what it says.  Most countries have a history of slaves and eventually it was ended but it is history, yes a bad history but we in 2023 cannot do anything about it but they want to take down statues and erase the history of the slaves!  Some people want to erase the Holocaust from history and say it did not happen and yet that surely then is letting down all the people who died during that dreadful time.  We need to remember these parts of history so that we do not repeat them again. 

Roald Dahl as a person had his own issues but that is nothing to do with the books he has written.  Our Boys loved the books but the Publishers should not be allowed to change them in this way.  As you know I buy a lot of books and because of this I will not be purchasing anything by Puffin/Penguin/Random House Books. 

There has been a lot of discussion about the above and likening it to “1984” by George Orwell, especially Big Brother and the Thought Police.  I really hope that we take a stand against this and other forms of “woke” white washing of our lives because if we don’t then we will be living in Mr Orwell’s 1984 before we know it!

Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco  xx

PS if you have any of Roald Dahl’s books from years ago hang on to them as they may be worth something if they carry on changing things!