By Roisin O’Connor
The Queen Consort has forced publisher Puffin UK to back down on its censorship of Roald Dahl books after she intervened in the decision to edit his words.
Camilla gave an impassioned defence of free speech and the right of writers to express themselves at Clarence House on Thursday just days after she let it be known privately that she had serious concerns over the changes to Dahl’s books.
Last week, it emerged that the best-selling children’s books were being rewritten to remove language considered offensive by Puffin.
Meanwhile, The Democrat is still waiting – after many months and even years – to hear from West Dunbartonshire Council if it will cease its attempts to gag us by refusing to accept our status as bona fide journalists.
Perhaps the Council’s relatively new Labour council, who are expected to present their budget for the next financial year next Wednesday, will drop their anti-democratic stance, first introduced by the basket case SNP administration when that party was in power?
Today the publisher has announced the release of the Roald Dahl Classic Collection ‘to keep the author’s classic texts in print’ claiming they had ‘listened to the debate’ following criticism of recent editing of his work to remove words such as ‘fat’.
Dahl’s 17 books, read and loved by tens of millions, will be available later this year and will include archive material relevant to each of the stories by the much-loved children’s author.
These unedited versions will still sit alongside the newly-released Roald Dahl books, which have been controversially rewritten – sparking outrage in Britain.
It came as new polling found almost two out of three Britons (60%) disagree with changing language in classic children’s books and 63% opposed recent changes to the books of Roald Dahl. Just 20% supported the edits.
The fact that this decision to change words if extremely unpopular became very clear from the contributions from both panelists and audience on the BBC’s Question Time programme this week.
The latest editions of Mr Dahl’s children’s books have been edited to remove language which could be deemed offensive – Puffin says they will now republish them unedited. Picture at top of page is of King Charles and Queen Camilla.