Ladies And Gentlemen, I Have Finally Found It!

 The most unbelievably and insufferably arrogant person in the UK! Beating off, I have to say, some pretty strict competition but he did it with ease:

Imagine the astonishing level of self-absorption you have to have to claim children are 'suffering' by not being able to read your works? 

It was against this backdrop (The Taliban's decicion to stop girls attending school, Reader)  that I read about the school in Weymouth, Dorset, that had removed American author Angie Thomas’s wildly popular young adult novel The Hate U Give from its Year 10 reading list, apparently in response to the objection of one parent, former Conservative councillor James Farquharson. While copies of the book would continue to be available in the school library, its removal from classrooms sent a worrying message: that one man’s comfort could be considered more important than the rights of an entire student cohort to access literature that might speak directly to them, never mind that it may contain dangerous or difficult ideas.

They can, of course, still access his scribblings freely, by walking into a bookshop or opening their Kindle and clicking the little shopping trolley icon, he's just lost his ability to have them given no choice but to read it by having schools ram it down their throats... 

The use of my novel, Pigeon English, is also under review at the school, thanks again to Farquharson’s intervention. His objections to my book – which he shared on Facebook having read the first 13 pages and Googled some reviews – centre on its use of profane language and depictions of violence and sexual behaviour.

Well, why on earth would we want children reading that, then? 

Pigeon English explores some of the same themes as The Hate U Give, social injustice chief among them. It draws on my experiences growing up on a diverse and deprived council estate in Luton in the 1980s and 90s, and on the killing of Damilola Taylor, the Nigerian schoolboy stabbed to death in Peckham, London, in 2000.

Sound like a feelgood read. 

The novel was very much directed at an adult readership, which I felt could parse some of its more troubling content and recognise the urgent social questions it posed. I did not predict that it would end up in the hands of schoolchildren or being dissected in classrooms; nor was I consulted when the decision was made in 2015 – rubber-stamped by a Conservative education secretary – to include it on the GCSE curriculum.

Should they have consulted you? This man's ego clearly knows no bounds. As if he'd have said anything but 'Yes please!' 

When Caravaggio’s Madonna di Loreto was unveiled in 1606 it scandalised Rome; not because it dared to put a face to the newborn Christ but because it showed the dirty feet of the peasants who knelt to venerate him. Centuries later, do those same prudish sensitivities still prevail?

Good god, he's comparing himself to bloody Caravaggio now!