Category Archives: Poetry

World Brendan O’Neill Roald Dahl [Getty] Brendan O’Neill 19 February 2023 9:57 PM The vandals have come for Roald Dahl. His books for children are to be cleansed of their ‘offensive’ content. Sensitivity readers – what we used to call censors – have been employed to pore over his works and expurgate any word orContinue reading “The rewriting of Roald Dahl is an act of cultural vandalism”

Although Wycliffe was long dead, the Pope condemned him for heresy in 1415. His supporters – named ‘Lollards’ for their habit of mumbling – were suppressed. Some were burnt to death. Yet Wycliffe’s ideas endured: he was later hailed as the Reformation’s ‘Morning Star’. The Church’s attempt to silence him could be said to be Oxford’s firstContinue reading “In 1408, the Archbishop of Canterbury convened a synod in Oxford to prohibit the reading of John Wycliffe’s English translation of the Bible without the Church’s permission. Long before Martin Luther, Wycliffe – a priest, theologian, and Oxford fellow – argued scripture was the only reliable guide to God’s truth, and that the Papacy had no Biblical justification. His unprecedented translation was a practical – and, for the Church, worryingly popular – challenge to Church orthodoxy.”

Across his beloved children’s books, hundreds of the author’s words have been changed or entirely removed in a bid for ‘relevancy’ By Ed Cumming ; Genevieve Holl-Allen and Benedict Smith 17 February 2023 • 7:59pm “Words matter,” begins the discreet notice, which sits at the bottom of the copyright page of Puffin’s latest editions of RoaldContinue reading “The Rewriting of Roald Dahl’s Books”