Sir, – I can’t understand the opposition to the sanitisation of the Roald Dahl books (Jennifer O’Connell, “Yes, Roald Dahl sometimes got it wrong. But it isn’t up to us to make it right”, Books, February 22nd).
Children reading the books today won’t know the previous version and they will enjoy the books just as much as previous generations did. Noddy was sanitised a few years ago and we don’t mourn the fact that Noddy no longer “feels gay”, or that his friends, previously named for their anatomical features or differences, have either disappeared from the stories (golliwogs) or have been renamed (Big Ears is now Mr Squeaks).
Let’s try to have a society where storytelling can be fun but doesn’t have to be at the expense of those who are deemed to be a little different from our traditional physical and cultural norms.
Thank God Billy Bunter seems to have disappeared forever. – Yours, etc,
FINBAR KEARNS,
Piercestown,
Co Wexford.
Sir, – Much like Jennifer O’Connell I grew up reading Roald Dahl’s books so that my original copies fell asunder, and decades later I read new copies to my own children.
They were still brilliant, irreverent and capable of eliciting almost every emotion. I’m not impressed therefore at reports that the publisher has employed “sensitivity readers” who have seemingly trawled through the works looking for material to be offended by, much like a Premier League striker waiting to be touched so he can dive to the ground and pretend to be injured. Nonetheless I’m not surprised, given the bizarre priorities of modernity, at this idiotic Bowdlerisation. I’d have hoped though that the rewriting might, at least, have been of a passable standard.
Unfortunately that, even from the snippets quoted, is apparently not the case. In the original books witches, readers were told, could “work in ordinary jobs” such as being “a cashier in a supermarket, writing letters for a businessman or driving around in a fancy car”. In the new version they may have “ordinary jobs” such as being “a top scientist or running a business”. Whatever the motivation, it seems undeniable to me that you can have the word “ordinary” or “top” in that sentence, but not both. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN O’BRIEN,
Kinsale,
Co Cork.
Sir, – The editing or rewriting of Roald Dahl’s most potentially offensive novels serves to underline how ludicrous the practice of wokewashing is. What next? Airbrush any old masters that depict a hint of naked flesh, perhaps? – Yours, etc,
FRANK BYRNE,
Glasnevin,
Dublin 9.