Re-editing Enid

Mercy me, it seems children’s publishing has lost the plot! The editors’ red pencil is now hovering over classic Enid Blyton-speak like ‘awful swotter’ and ‘jolly japes’ after the fellows deracinated her dramatis personae in the name of political correctness. The reason for dragging her language from the 1940s to the 21st century? To make them ‘timeless’ so that children are ‘more likely to be able to engage with them’ , according to the publishers, who also hasten to add that the storylines will remain the same.

Faint hope of that, considering other icons of popular literature are being remorselessly rousted out of their eras and contexts in the name of contemporaneity; Sherlock Holmes has been recast, ditto Bond, and now even Tarzan is getting a makeover. The fear is that eventually Enid Blyton’s jolly adventurous youngsters who got up to high jinks, had hearty ‘teas’ that featured thick ham sandwiches and ‘lashings of ginger beer’ may be forced to become cool dudes in unisex clothes, feasting on hamburgers and cola in the name of ‘updating’ .

But modifying a language to make it more attractive to children could, in fact, have unintended consequences. Would a classic Shakespearean line such as ‘Out upon thee, knave’ seem more logical to children if it is re-edited as, ‘Get out, you sod’ ? Or, instead , could it lead them to think that English is probably the most stodgy of languages as it has not evolved for 500 years? At least if arcane phrases like ‘jolly good’ and ‘what ho!’ — used to such great effect by P G Wodehouse to evoke the lifestyle of a certain time and class — can teach young readers to understand that cultures evolve as do languages, they would have a more realistic attitude towards whatever they speak at the moment.

Not only are publishers, in effect, rewriting history in the name of rightspeak, they are robbing an era of their authentic voice. In any case, when language is becoming alarmingly crude and graphic, if children can be persuaded to keep a modicum of anachronistic innocence for even a little while, even at the expense of political correctness, the world will be a gentler place!