Bel Mooney: Enough! Stop tampering with our cultural heritage and making Roald Dahl books politically correct

The fairy tales I read as a child were a world of terror. Those collections by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm still sit on my shelves, next to volumes of European and world folk tales and Greek myths. They all fed my imagination, enthralling me with lessons about the darkness that’s at the heart of existence. No children’s story Roald Dahl ever concocted could match those beloved tales for cruel old witches, rapacious kings, sex-mad princes, evil dwarfs, trolls and (of course) pretty virginal victims — who would inevitably be abandoned by adults, mistreated by wicked stepmothers, imprisoned, carried off on horses, kissed (without giving consent, of course), threatened with cannibalism, made to marry men they didn’t know, and so on. How thrilling! But now Roald Dahl’s Matilda, James And The Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Witches and other classic titles, are thought not suitable for children — unless sanitised. His trademark sharpness has been blunted, his language changed to suit modern sensitivities about gender, race, weight, violence and mental health. The Cloud-Men in James And The Giant Peach are now the Cloud-People. Tractors in Fantastic Mr Fox are not allowed to be “black” for fear that it’s racist, and a character isn’t allowed to “turn white”, they have to “turn quite pale”. In 1983, Dahl wrote a story about a boy growing up with a bunch of bald witches. Gloriously unpleasant, The Witches included this passage: ‘“Don’t be foolish,” my grandmother said. “You can’t go round pulling the hair of every lady you meet, even if she is wearing gloves. Just you try it and see what happens.”’ The latest edition, published last year, says this: ‘“Don’t be foolish,” my grandmother said. “Besides, there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”’ Can you believe it? The pathetic tampering with dangerous Dahl goes on and on: “You must be mad, woman!” becomes “You must be out of your mind!” Mrs Twit is no longer “ugly”, and the Oompa Loompas are gender-neutral. No character is allowed to be “fat” — because that might upset the burger-chomping young. Augustus Gloop in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory is now “enormous” instead of “fat”. “Fat little brown mouse” is changed to “little brown mouse” (The Witches). The words “Here’s your little boy,” she said. “He needs to go on a diet” have been shortened to, “Here’s your little boy”. One of the changes in The Witches is particularly excruciating. The sentence, “Even if she is working as a cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman” has been changed to, “Even if she is working as a top scientist or running a business”. That reveals a truth at the heart of the censorious psyche. Those snooty, publishing half-wits all have degrees from what passes as the modern university and simply can’t bear to think of “ordinary” lives and everyday jobs. Oh, my dear — imagine being the inferior woman who scans their sauvignon, salami and satsumas in the supermarket. Once upon a time, I was a successful children’s author, my books taking me into the top earning bracket of royalties accrued through library borrowing. I used to visit libraries, schools and children’s festivals all over Britain to talk about my work and answer questions. So I discovered at first hand just how quirky, entertaining, questioning, daft, sweet and admirably robust kids can be. They wanted to talk about everything from the cheeky, “How much do you make, Miss?” to the tragic, “It’s not fair my favourite uncle died — and he was only young, too.” Nothing was beyond them. Back then you felt you could write almost anything for children, trusting your own knowledge and experience. My books raised issues, yet were also funny. In essence I was always on the side of the naughty ones and understood the fears beneath bad behaviour. Nobody ever told me what to write. So it makes me incandescent to see how today’s young readers are being patronised and short-changed by adults who should know better. I pity modern authors who struggle against the rising tide of puritanism and protectionism that has swept through publishing. It might be tempting just to mock the lily-livered “sensitivity readers” employed by the once-great publishing house, Puffin Books — and other large ones, too. Those hapless souls are doomed to be holed up like poor Rapunzel in her tower, forced to sift through books looking for “problematic words and phrases which might cause offence — weeping in horror as they rewrite them. They must have nightmares about wicked witches, inappropriate princes and black cats. The fairy tales I read as a child would make any sensitivity reader pass out with shock. We could giggle at the absurdity. But this is deadly serious — and all the righteous indignation caused by this betrayal of the spirit of Dahl has helplessness as its undercurrent. What the hell can we do? The imaginations of children have fear imprinted on them at birth — the witches and goblins of folk-memory and the nameless dread of darkness. As they grow older, more specific shapes loom from the murk: strangers, robbers, the monster you know lives under the bed. Books like Dahl’s — in their unsanitised form — cater for these imaginations. They help prepare the young for the fright caused by images that crowd in from an imperfect world: gunfire, bombs, violence, the shattered grief on the faces of survivors after a tsunami, a famine, an earthquake. This latest example of the appalling stranglehold that “wokery” (or political correctness, as it used to be called) now has on our society must take us beyond weary smiles and sighs. The issue affects every one of us. Most important of all, it denies to children the right to be shocked, to be scared, to laugh at the “wrong” things, and to make up their own minds about the world. For their sake we have to shout: “Enough!” What gives these censors — who also find Shakespeare and many other writers greater than Roald Dahl ‘problematic’ — any right to tamper with our cultural heritage? The serious backlash is overdue. How about refusing to buy any book published by Puffin? After that — I’ll meet you on the barricades to hurl their paltry, rewritten efforts at the enemy, waking them up with a vengeance.