IMO, I don't think this is a hard issue, at all. I don't think it's partisan, either - although it's (as ever) being wrapped up as such. It seems to be blindin

IMO, I don't think this is a hard issue, at all. I don't think it's partisan, either - although it's (as ever) being wrapped up as such. It seems to be blindingly obvious. Culture, art, writing - life, in fact - is of its time. It should be left alone. And we - as later, perhaps "better" (in some ways?) future generations - should examine these works and those times, and use this to encourage our own sense of morality and direction. We should use it to explain what went on - and in some cases to condemn, in others to reflect on what was better, and why. To whitewash (sorry, oops, probably not supposed to..., ffs) this away and pretend things never happened IS censorship. It's the central tenet of 1984, or any dystopian vision, or that of dictatorships. This is the re-writing of history! So - yes, we should have a "Black Boys Road" in Bristol, for example, and we should then use our museums and our history books to illuminate the horrors of slavery, the reality that Bristol was deeply involved in the slave trade, that Colston was a slaver - we should examine this deeply, and understand it, and condemn it in the strongest possible terms. But to just remove all the bits we find uncomfortable is a terrible error. It removes our means to question, our means to reflect. It's the same as talking about mental health issues in my opinion - if you hide shit away, the problem will never, ever resolve. The only way to get to any kind of resolution - painful though it is - is to talk about it. All the above is a more general point about this terrible inflection point in our history where it seems certain people believe that All The Bad Things should be expunged, as if life can be made comfortable and easy, no bumps in the road here - and for god's sake don't "trigger me", I don't want to be sad... but in the Roald Dahl case, the example edits being quoted in the Spectator and other places are just so, so, SO misguided it hurts. I have teen children who can - and do - question the world, ask why things are as they are, point out the injustices of the past, know keenly what makes them (and others) sad. They're sometimes (gasp) sad themselves, and we work together to figure out what this means, and why. The world hurts sometimes, and we as humans need to learn how to deal with this stuff, without expecting some kind of sugar coated - and let's face it, insanely bland - landscape where everything is beautiful and happy and rose tinted all the time. If society feels the need to flag things like Dahl as being "triggering" (I hate that word, what b/s) then so be it - ("The original work was written a long time ago and doesn't reflect many modern views") - but FFS leave the original work as it is.