OUNTRY people often bring a dose of healthy scepticism in considering fashionable change. Nowhere is it more needed than in the current obsession with ‘reforming’ the English language. Roald Dahl is the latest victim. Parents know that the whole point about Augustus Gloop is that he is fat and the concept of a fat and greedy boy is immediately accessible to children., the word ‘fat’ has been excised as politically incorrect (he’s ‘enormous’ now). It’s one of hundreds of woke changes to Dahl’s work, including the removal of Miss Trunchbull’s ‘great horsey face’.
