Someone needs to start up “Insensitive Publishing” to publish unbowdlerised literature.
i find it extraordinarily offensive that a publisher should subject their author to the inane commentary of snivelling semi-illiterates bent on destructive ideological criticism. I shall certainly avoid anything published by Picador as I will assume it is bowdlerised rubbish having been subjected to sensitivity readers. The editor should hang his head in shame but is no doubt too stupid and crass to do so.

‘Philip Gwyn Jones, the new holder of Peter Straus’s position, tweeted: “I now understand I must use my privileged position as a white middle-class gatekeeper with more awareness to promote diversity, equity, inclusivity, as all UK publishing strives to put right decades of structural inequality”.’
… no, Philip, your job is to publish the very best literature that you can, harnessing and enabling the talent of your authors and putting no limits on the diversity of opinion they should represent. In short, do the job you’re paid to do. You should not be using your position to force the worldview of you and your mates on everyone else whilst suppressing anything you deem “problematic”. And if you have such a problem being “privileged” and “middle class”, I suggest you step down from your lofty position and get a poorly paid job in the care sector – they’re crying out for staff – or go stack shelves in Asda That’ll knock the “privilege” out of you and might soothe your terrible guilt, instead of inflicting it on others. You can’t do anything about being white, though, I’m afraid you’ll just have to live with that burden.

The sooner ‘sensitivity readers’, or should we call them charlatans, are cancelled the better. They are patently mischief makers enabling evermore ludicrous ways to make money. Sadly at the rate these people are being churned out of universities, it doesn’t look likely.
Back in the day it was called censorship, but at least everyone had a clearer idea of what ‘heinous’ words or ideas were kind of forbidden and could fight back against it.

We used to mock and despise these kinds of people, the finger-wagger and serial complainer. Then all of a sudden they became the commissars of our treasured institutions. Our lives are being governed by over-zealous prefects and the type of person who used to write letters of complaint to the BBC. I have absolutely no idea how it happened, but the concept of a political commissar taking a red pen to literature to ensure it’s politically sound is about as revolting as it gets. Especially (as in the Soviet Union) these censors have all the wit and literary skill of a potato.

I grew up reading fantastic books as a boy – fantastic ones, such as existed back then, before they were removed. Rider Haggard was a perticular favorite, ‘King Solomon’s Mines’, an amazing Victorian book ….

During the great annual Witch Hunt 40,000 soldiers are paraded into a nighttime formation for the witch finders to go amongst them, smelling out the evil ones, to a summary execution:

“”It is so, my lords. Alas! the land cries out because of his cruelties. To-night ye shall see. It is the great witch-hunt, and many will be smelt out as wizards and slain. No man’s life is safe. If the king covets a man’s cattle, or a man’s wife, or if he fears a man that he should excite a rebellion against him, then Gagool, whom ye saw, or some of the witch-finding women whom she has taught, will smell that man out as a wizard, and he will be killed.”

**

“The king seated himself upon the centre stool, Gagool crouched at his feet, and the others stood behind him.
“Greeting, white lords,” Twala cried, as we came up; “be seated, waste not precious time–the night is all too short for the deeds that must be done. Ye come in a good hour, and shall see a glorious show. Look round, white lords; look round,” and he rolled his one wicked eye from regiment to regiment. “Can the Stars show you such a sight as this? See how they shake in their wickedness, all those who have evil in their hearts and fear the judgment of ‘Heaven above.'”
“/Begin! begin!/” piped Gagool, in her thin piercing voice; “the hyaenas are hungry, they howl for food. /Begin! begin!/”
Then for a moment there was intense stillness, made horrible by a presage of what was to come.”

**

“The king lifted his spear, and suddenly twenty thousand feet were raised, as though they belonged to one man, and brought down with a stamp upon the earth. This was repeated three times, causing the solid ground to shake and tremble. Then from a far point of the circle a solitary voice began a wailing song, of which the refrain ran something as follows:–
“/What is the lot of man born of woman?/”
Back came the answer rolling out from every throat in that vast company–
“/Death!/”:”

**

“Again silence fell upon the place, and again it was broken by the king lifting his hand. Instantly we heard a pattering of feet, and from out of the masses of warriors strange and awful figures appeared running towards us. As they drew near we saw that these were women, most of them aged, for their white hair, ornamented with small bladders taken from fish, streamed out behind them. Their faces were painted in stripes of white and yellow; down their backs hung snake-skins, and round their waists rattled circlets of human bones, while each held a small forked wand in her shrivelled hand. In all there were ten of them. When they arrived in front of us they halted, and one of them, pointing with her wand towards the crouching figure of Gagool, cried out–
“Mother, old mother, we are here.”
“/Good! good! good!/” answered that aged Iniquity. “Are your eyes keen, /Isanusis/ [witch doctresses], ye seers in dark places?”
“Mother, they are keen.”
“/Good! good! good!/ Are your ears open, /Isanusis/, ye who hear words that come not from the tongue?”
“Mother, they are open.”
“/Good! good! good!/ Are your senses awake, /Isanusis/–can ye smell blood, can ye purge the land of the wicked ones who compass evil against the king and against their neighbours? Are ye ready to do the justice of ‘Heaven above,’ ye whom I have taught, who have eaten of the bread of my wisdom, and drunk of the water of my magic?”
“Mother, we can.”
“Then go! Tarry not, ye vultures; see, the slayers”–pointing to the ominous group of executioners behind–“make sharp their spears; the white men from afar are hungry to see. /Go!/”
With a wild yell Gagool’s horrid ministers broke away in every direction, like fragments from a shell, the dry bones round their waists rattling as they ran, and headed for various points of the dense human circle. We could not watch them all, so we fixed our eyes upon the /Isanusi/ nearest to us. When she came to within a few paces of the warriors she halted and began to dance wildly, turning round and round with an almost incredible rapidity, and shrieking out sentences such as “I smell him, the evil-doer!” “He is near, he who poisoned his mother!” “I hear the thoughts of him who thought evil of the king!”
Quicker and quicker she danced, till she lashed herself into such a frenzy of excitement that the foam flew in specks from her gnashing jaws,”

“/Isanusi/ was before them. Then she halted and pointed, and again crept on a pace or two.
Suddenly the end came. With a shriek she sprang in and touched a tall warrior with her forked wand. Instantly two of his comrades, those standing immediately next to him, seized the doomed man, each by one arm, and advanced with him towards the king.
He did not resist, but we saw that he dragged his limbs as though they were paralysed, and that his fingers, from which the spear had fallen, were limp like those of a man newly dead.
As he came, two of the villainous executioners stepped forward to meet him. Presently they met, and the executioners turned round, looking towards the king as though for orders
Almost before the words were uttered the horrible dead was done. One man had driven his spear into the victim’s heart, and to make assurance double sure, the other had dashed out his brains with a great club.”
.
“/Kill!/” said the king.
“/Kill!/” squeaked Gagool.”

…………………………..

You do not get writing like that anymore, even though the witch hunts continue……

‘I thought carefully about all the notes I had been given and, in the end, adopted none of the suggestions proffered by the Readers.’
Good for you, Kate. I can imagine how horribly stressful this whole charade must have been for you; but for the wider world at least, this is a silver lining. Picador behaved appallingly to you, and they should be ashamed of themselves. It is long overdue that this rampant politicisation disguised as ‘sensitivity’ was challenged head-on by writers. The alternative is a future of dire Maoist literature, all following the party line.
(Or is that the present?)
The good news is that there are publishers out there prepared to stand up against the commissars. I suspect more will pop up as this deepens. In the meantime, my two pennorth is that no writer should ever allow a ‘sensitivity reader’ anywhere near their work.

As an American, I truly stand in awe at how well Kate and most of the commenters deftly use the English language. I can also say this “sensitivity” push is a ruse like everything else we do here in the states. It’s nothing but a marketing ploy to feign concern in certain areas so as to deflect attention from other, more serious, matters, such as the huge wealth disparity.

I just got your original book out of the library (not to burn, but to read…). Look forward to that even more now.
What I fail to understand is why you republished a revised version of your book like a 21st century Enid Blyton. You must use your original work (bar the typos) because anything less would make your detractors were right (and scores of your older readers stupid).

Also, you say “Picador and I agreed to split”. If I correctly remember you were “made to split”. To say that it was an “agreement” sounds to me like the euphemism of the year.

What a wonderful read. Ms Clanchy, I shall treat myself to a copy of your book. It sounds great. And as for your tormentors, what meagre little lives they must lead. Unlike your former pupils, one supposes.
Oh, and with specific reference to “Liam”, I was lucky to have sympathetic teachers when I was coming out as a teenager. Need I tell you that your empathy and concern were absolutely spot-on?

Books could be published in two versions:- 1. unexpurgated, for normal people. 2. sensitised, for those delicate persons who are likely to suffer PTSD if they read anything that challenges their view of the world. There would be the added advantage that the print runs for the second version would be small enough to resurrect the skill of hand press printing.

This is horrifying. Things are even worse than I thought.

Fascinating and there I was thinking you let writers write and teach children to read so that they grew up into adults who could understand anything they read.

I think that to call one’s publishing house Picador offends the sensibilities of those of us who find bullfighting cruel. For shame!

“There are good reasons for regulating children’s reading… It is genuinely important, there, to avoid oppressive stereotypes.”

And she was doing so well until then. So the author fully embraces “sensitivity readers”, just not for her genre.

Great art isn’t made by committee. If you want a pointless, committee-written book, read Nancy Drew. If you want meaningless art, find a Pollock-clone. If you want music without meaning, listen to any pop song. Great art means having something worthwhile to say and the talent and skill to say it in a beautiful and/or thought-provoking way.

Sensitivity readers dilute both the message and the method. They don’t belong in any artistic endeavor.

“Of course I cared. I’m horrified that people found prejudice and cruelty in my book.”
A writer is either a forthright teller of truth or a shaper of “narrative” to suit. There is no middle ground.