Rewrite, Replace or Respect? The Writer’s Dilemma in the Age of Cancellation
- David Salariya
- May 4
- 5 min read
Caught in the Crossfire
Roald Dahl is back in the headlines, and not for the reasons we’d hope. This time, it’s not about chocolate factories or marvellous medicines, but censorship, antisemitism, and the long shadow of cancel culture. John Lithgow, currently portraying Dahl in the West End play Giant, recently told Sky News that the author would be "immediately" cancelled in today's world. The play imagines Dahl wrestling with whether to apologise for inflammatory comments made in 1983 - a moment of reckoning, decades before X/Twitter mobs and online boycotts became standard practice.
“even a stinker like Hitler didn’t pick on [the Jews] for no reason”.Roald Dahl
New Statesman
Giant is at the Harold Pinter Theatre
Lithgow’s portrayal is powerful because it’s rooted in today’s reality: the artist who must navigate past sins, present scrutiny, and future relevance. Giant, which has transferred to the West End after winning three Olivier Awards including Best Play, offers a blisteringly topical yet empathetic portrayal of Dahl. Set in 1983, it places the author in the crosshairs of a moral crisis following anti-Israeli and antisemitic remarks he made in a book review -forcing him to choose between apology and professional ruin. Director Nicholas Hytner’s production crackles with tension, and John Lithgow’s performance is matched by Aya Cash’s formidable turn as a fictional American publishing executive demanding accountability. It’s a tightrope, and increasingly, it’s a no-win situation.
The Writer’s Dilemma in the Age of Cancellation
Lithgow’s portrayal is powerful because it’s rooted in today’s reality: the artist who must navigate past sins, present scrutiny, and future relevance. It’s a tightrope, and increasingly, it’s a no-win situation.
Who Gets to Rewrite History?
When Puffin Books announced in 2023 that it had edited hundreds of words from Dahl’s books - removing references to weight, mental health, and race - the backlash was swift. Words were softened, phrases changed, entire sentences replaced to "reflect contemporary sensibilities." It was done, we're told, to protect young readers. But is that truly the motive? Or is it more about protecting sales?
Salman Rushdie - no stranger to censorship - called the move "absurd." He wasn’t defending Dahl’s bigotry, which he acknowledged. But he was defending the text, the integrity of the work. After all, who gets to decide what’s acceptable? Who sits on this new editorial tribunal?
The Curious Case of Enid Blyton (and Others)
Enid Blyton is a cultural weathervane, alternately vilified and venerated. Her work has been labelled sexist, xenophobic, and elitist - and yet, she endures, repackaged again and again. She was completely out of fashion in the late 1950's but back in fashion and used in schools by the mid-60's. Meanwhile, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn gets cleansed of racial slurs, Dr. Seuss faces posthumous cancellation, and Dahl’s own family issues a retroactive apology for his views.
It’s a strange time to be a writer. Especially when former President Trump can X /tweet an AI generated of image of himself dressed as the Pope with little consequence. We live in a paradoxical age: one that’s both hyper-sensitive and utterly shameless, punishing nuance while rewarding spectacle. A writer can be cancelled for a tweet - or have their life's work rewritten for the sake of optics.
Editors vs. Authors - Who Holds the Pen?
The editor's red pen used to be a tool of collaboration. Now, it's sometimes wielded like a political instrument. Increasingly, books are retrofitted posthumously to fit modern marketability. Editors - not co-authors, not cultural scholars - are reshaping canonical texts to pre-empt public backlash. But in doing so, are we eroding the very thing that makes literature valuable: its rootedness in time, place, and voice?
Every edit is an interpretation. Every omission, a quiet decision about what children are allowed to know. So who has the right to rewrite, replace or respect?
Sanitisation and the Death of Discovery
There’s another cost to all this sanitising: if publishers spend so much time repackaging dead authors and out of date books that we forget to promote living ones. The air is sucked out of the room for new voices. If some publishers channel all their energy into retro-editing the classics and out of date material, who’s curating the future? Who's championing diverse, contemporary writers creating honest, original work now?
Rather than curating and publishing exciting new work that speaks to today’s children in today’s world, why choose to reprint old titles from decades past - “refreshed” or “repackaged” with only superficial font changes. But what child in 2025 should be learning from materials written, designed, and illustrated in the 1990's?
Even history evolves. Our understanding of the past has expanded in ways that should enrich children’s books, not be ignored. Forty years ago, we lazily imagined the Roman army as a uniform legion of Italian, armoured soldiers. Research wasn't done in a couple of clicks. Now of course we know properly the Roman Empire stretched across three continents - its soldiers were African, Middle Eastern, European, and Asian. That’s not revisionism. That’s why in publishing a book for example on the Roman Army we would be more aware of trying to figure out carefully what is being included. That's a better inclusive history. And it’s what our illustrations should reflect.
The ancient world was of course just as diverse as the world now. So why are publishers just “refreshing” the old, instead of commissioning new books, new ideas, new authors? Why are we stuck in a cycle of nostalgic or mean recycling when children of the 21st Century deserve and need fresh perspectives, not perspectives from the mid 1990’s.
I certainly wouldn’t have published a non-fiction book created in1950 as new in 1990 - and yet that’s exactly what’s happening now.
A Case for Context, Not Censorship
So what’s the alternative? Should we let everything stand? Not necessarily. Dahl’s antisemitism was appalling. His comments were indefensible. But should the stories be rewritten? Or should we add a foreword, a note of context, a critical lens?
We don’t need to protect children from difficult truths. We need to help them engage with them. Writing isn’t just a mirror - it’s also a map. It shows us where we’ve been, even when the past is ugly. This is the writer’s dilemma in the age of cancellation.
The Writer’s Dilemma Today
For writers now, the message is clear: self-censor, second-guess, or suffer the consequences. That’s not a healthy climate for creativity. As someone who’s spent a career in publishing, I’ve seen how quickly fear replaces imagination. The editor becomes a risk analyst. The writer, a liability. But what future are we creating when every sentence must pass through a lens of social media approval?
We don’t need less freedom. We need more responsibility - with freedom. That means equipping readers with critical tools, not sanitised pages.
Let Dahl's ugliness be footnoted, not whitewashed. Let Twain provoke. Let Rushdie shout.
Let new writers rise.
And honestly, let’s just allow editors to edit - but not erase.
Giant is at the Harold Pinter Theatre to 2 August. Giant tickets
Comentários