Despite Roald Dahl having urged his publishers to not "so much as change a single comma in one of my books", in February 2023 Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Books, announced it would be re-writing portions of many of Dahl's children's novels, changing the language to, in the publisher's words, "ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today."[19] The decision was met with strong criticism from groups and public figures including authors Salman Rushdie,[20][21] and Christopher Paolini,[22] British prime minister Rishi Sunak,[20][21] Queen Camilla,[20][23] Kemi Badenoch,[24] PEN America,[20][21] and Brian Cox.[24] In an interview with Newsnight, author Margaret Atwood said concerning the censorship: "Good luck with Roald Dahl. You're just really going to have to replace the whole book if you want things to be nice. But this started a long time ago; it was the Disneyfication of fairy tales. What do I think of it? I'm with Chaucer, who said, 'If you don’t like this tale, turn over the page and read something else.'"[25] Dahl's publishers in the United States, France, and the Netherlands announced they had declined to incorporate the changes.[20]
In The Witches, more than 50 changes were made, including major alterations to the descriptions of the witches' baldness and wearing of wigs (including adding an additional sentence not found in the original work, defending the wearing of wigs by women), removing many references to women's appearances, removing grotesque or insulting words like pimply, filthy, and hag, and removing instances of the word fat (e.g., changing "fat little brown mouse" to "little brown mouse").[26][27]
| Original text | 2023 text[27] |
|---|---|
| 'Don't be foolish,' my grandmother said. 'You can't go round pulling the hair of every lady you meet, even if she is wearing gloves. Just you try it and see what happens.' | 'Don't be foolish,' my grandmother said. 'Besides, there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.' |
