Long-dead writers are being called out for offending contemporary sensibilities, and sensitivity readers are relentlessly filleting books of anything that upsets their identitarian worldview.

In February, the PC ghouls went for Roald Dahl, making ‘hundreds of changes’ to his beloved children’s books. Then, just days later, it emerged they had sanded off the edges of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.

It didn’t stop there. In March, it was reported that Agatha Christie’s novels had been reworked to remove offensive language, such as insults and references to ethnicity. Two months later, Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit children’s books  were called out for cultural appropriation. 

There is something especially disturbing about the rewriting of literature, be it classic, popular or otherwise. Doing so alters the record of experience, it adjusts the collective memory. It is, in short, deranging. A set of dubious values, built on the shifting sands of identity politics, is being allowed to eat away at our shared understanding of time and tradition.

However, there is something we can all do to resist this assault on our literary past. And that’s to start creating our own personal libraries.

Full story in Spiked: HERE