Picture: ITV News
WHEN unconnected stories roll into the limelight together, it is tempting to find a link.
So it is that the row over potentially offensive passages being rewritten in Roald Dahl’s books trots alongside Boris Johnson buying a £4 million manor house in Oxfordshire.
The author of the BFG meets the author of the country’s misfortune, and here you can fill in your own replacement words for Big Friendly Giant (mine includes a swearword and ends in “Gutbucket”).
Other titles to consider might include George’s Not So Marvellous Privatised Medicine, Boris And The Money For Nothing Factory and – should you favour a sweeping comment on those in power – The Twats.
We will come to Johnson’s marvellous mansion in a moment. First here is that giant rotten peach of a row about textual amendments.
It’s not unusual for children’s books to be edited as times change. Enid Blyton’s Famous Five novels suffered that improvement/indignity in 2010, with “jolly japes” and “lashings of pop” being excised from the text for the entirely sensible reason that modern children had no idea what they meant.
The Dahl story was ‘uncovered’ by the Daily Telegraph, a newspaper that never misses calling a molehill a huge woke mountain. Among the alleged offences under the Permanent Outrage Act was that Augustus Gloop in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory is no longer “fat”, just “enormous”.
The fat reduction doesn’t end there, either. Earlier editions of James And The Giant Peach had the Centipede singing: “Aunt Sponge was terrifically fat, and tremendously flabby at that,” and, “Aunt Spiker was thin as a wire, and dry as a bone, only drier.”
These verses are said to have been changed to: “Aunt Sponge was a nasty old brute, and deserved to be squashed by the fruit,” and, “Aunt Spiker was much of the same, and deserves half of the blame.”
And, yes, the originals are better, but honestly it’s no big deal.
Outrage of the sort certain newspapers keep by the yard (never the metre) was quickly rolled out, and everybody joined in – even Rishi Sunak, who said in a statement that “we shouldn’t gobblefunk around” with Dahl’s words.
Way to go there, Rishi! The country’s falling apart, there are strikes all over the shop, your own party is sharpening its self-stabbing sticks again – and you have time to join in the latest silly cultural scrap.
The Roald Dahl rumpus fits the usual template, featuring those long-standing bit players the pesky woke PC mob, who once again are said to be determined to undermine all that is good about British life (etc, etc until the worms begin to bite).
Even Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie characterised the edits as “absurd censorship,” adding in a tweet: “Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed.”
Should they really, though? Publishing is a business based largely on whatever sells. Just go into a bookshop and see how many books there are by famous people.
If the Roald Dahl Story Company wishes to alter the original texts, it is to keep the books relevant and to make even more money. It’s a boring business decision rather than cultural vandalism.
Anyway, do generations of children have to keep reading these books for ever, just because their parents/grandparents did? I’m with Philip Pullman, the His Dark Materials author, who believes publishers should let Dahl’s books go “out of print” rather than attempt to edit his work to make it less controversial.
Brightwell Manor (picture: Mansion Global)
Boris Johnson is said to have already earned the outrageous cost of that manor house since he stepped down as prime minister – mostly by giving speeches to right-wing Americans and getting a £2.5 million advance for his memoirs (good luck getting him to deliver that on time).
As he basically only has one bluster-propelled speech, that might seem unfair, but let it go, honestly he’s not worth it.
One small detail of Brightwell Manor catches the eye. It is that the house has a moat that never runs dry, “as it is fed by its own natural spring”, according to the Guardian.
Now both his moat and his mouth need never run dry.
As for the millions that man is earning for being the worst ever prime minister (apart from Liz Truss), like I said, just let it go. He really isn’t worth it.