There has been much angst of late about, in rapid succession, the news that Roald Dahl’s children’s novels are to be republished in ‘revised’ versions by changing or cutting material deemed unacceptable by sensitivity readers,becoming ‘enormous’, when previously he was ‘fat’. More controversially, individual words haven’t just been changed, but entire passages completely rewritten. In James Bond goes to a nightclub in Harlem, and Fleming’s description of the has become The usual cries of outrage about all things ‘woke’ were heard across the land – as if being aware of and opposed to social injustice was a bad thing – but these new editions are the result of pragmatic commercial decisions. Publishers are in business to make money, and Dahl’s publisher (Penguin Random House) and Fleming’s rights’ owners
