BEL MOONEY: Snooty 'sensitivity readers' censored Roald Dahl

The fairy tales I read as a child were a world of terror. Those collections by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm still sit on my shelves, next to volumes of European and world folk tales and Greek myths. They all fed my imagination, enthralling me with lessons about the darkness that’s at the heart of existence.

No children’s story Roald Dahl ever concocted could match those beloved tales for cruel old witches, rapacious kings, sex-mad princes, evil dwarfs, trolls and (of course) pretty virginal victims — who would inevitably be abandoned by adults, mistreated by wicked stepmothers, imprisoned, carried off on horses, kissed (without giving consent, of course), threatened with cannibalism, made to marry men they didn’t know, and so on. How thrilling!

But now Roald Dahl’s Matilda, James And The Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Witches and other classic titles, are thought not suitable for children — unless sanitised.