Mrs Twit remains beastly, but no longer ugly. The thrilling nastiness that children love about Dahl isn’t completely expunged, but the range of things he can be nasty about is narrowing. So now children will be reminded that “there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that”, which doesn’t on reflection seem the end of the world, if it’s to avoid upsetting a child whose mum has lost her hair to chemotherapy. They’re fighting for space in a market of politically conscious millennial parents and school libraries whose inclusivity policies might in future make them think twice about a book like The Witches, whose demons hide their tell-tale bald heads under wigs. Given his own famously antisemitic views, Dahl has always, perhaps, been a high cancellation risk, and the books themselves were starting to show their age compared with modern children’s titles. But this looks more like a hardheaded business decision to protect those Netflix rights and avoid Dahl sharing the fate of the equally beloved Dr Seuss, some of whose titles were dropped in the US after being deemed culturally insensitive. The author Salman Rushdie, who denounced the “ absurd censorship” of Dahl, rightly focuses on the broader principle that editing cannot become suppression.

‘We made the pilgrimage to the Dahl museum in Great Missenden, with its magical recreation of his writer’s hut and its collection of homesick letters the author wrote back from boarding school.’ Photograph: Rolf Richardson/Alamy

What a pity synonym