Agatha Christie’s Poirot and Miss Marple edited by sensitivity readers | Books | Entertainment

Insiders at the publishing house told the Telegraph that sensitivity readers have been hard at work erasing the author’s original work. The outlet has seen digital versions of new editions that include many changes to Christie’s work penned between 1920-76.

Passages that have been edited or erased include “descriptions, insults or references to ethnicity, particularly for characters Christie’s protagonists encounter outside the UK.”

One example is 1937’s Death on the Nile in which Mrs Allerton complains of an annoying group of children saying: “They come back and stare, and stare, and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I really like children”. This has been changed in the new edition to: “They come back and stare, and stare. And I don’t believe I really like children.”

References to the Nubian people – an ethnic group who have lived in Egypt for thousands of years – have been removed from the Poirot novel. As a result “the Nubian boatman” are now simply referred to as “the boatman”.

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