Racism Allegation
Henry was the central character of what might be the most controversial story in the history of the Railway Series. In the story 'Henry's Sneeze', the character blasts some troublemaking schoolboys with soot. The story was attacked in 1972 due to the fact that it described the boys in question to have been rendered "as black as niggers."
The story was considered so controversial that it was actually reported in the national press. Awdry himself claimed that it was a case of oversensitivity on the part of the race relations board; a complaint that was misinterpreted by some members of the public as meaning that he was a racist. To solve the problem, he changed the offending sentence to "as black as soot", which has been used in subsequent editions of the book.
Read more about this topic: Henry The Green Engine
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