Irish Examiner view: Revision of Roald Dahl stories simply unnecessary

News that ‘sensitivity readers’ had been hired to re-examine the texts of author Roald Dahl seems to be another form of historical negationism.

Augustus Gloop, the gluttonous antagonist in 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', is no longer described as 'enormously fat', just 'enormous'.

Revisionism has its good and bad points. 

It usually involves challenging widely held and accepted views of our past, and in its most positive form can reflect new discoveries of evidence, fact, or interpretation, reversing previously accepted versions of truth. Legitimate historical revisionism puts a new slant on the accepted orthodoxy of incidents in our past which have subsequently shaped the world in which we live.

In recent times, we have seen many incidents of what has become known as historical negationism, which sees the use of forged documents or the manipulation of data to create a false view of history. Two good examples of this would apply to Holocaust deniers or those who attempted to subvert the results of a perfectly above-board election in America.

The recent news that book publisher Puffin, a division of Penguin Random House, had hired ‘sensitivity readers’ to re-examine the texts of author Roald Dahl seems to be another form of historical negationism. Dahl’s views, including antisemitic statements his family has been forced to apologise for after his death, have left a stain on the author’s work for many people, though its popularity remains strong today.

Author Roald Dahl. Picture: PA

But in the new edition of The Witches, one character previously described as “a cashier in a supermarket typing letters for a businessman” now turns out to be someone who is working as a “top scientist or running a business”.

Similarly, Augustus Gloop, the gluttonous antagonist in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is no longer described as “enormously fat”, just “enormous”.

These changes might be deemed necessary in an age of political correctness, but this appears to be revisionism of an unnecessary kind.