Apparently, Cambridge University’s English literature professors will be forced to replace white authors with black writers following proposals by Lola Olufemi, the students’ union women’s officer, in demands to ‘decolonise’ the curriculum.

Surely if students are unhappy with Cambridge’s traditional focuses on English literature they are free to study at a university more suited to their tastes, rather than dictating the content of a subject concerning which they have not yet had the opportunity to develop an informed opinion?

Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Austen and other giants of English literature were not shoehorned into the curriculum on the basis of their race, gender or sexual preference to promote the ideology of inequality, though that is the belief of equality campaigners in the Faculty of Grievanceology who demand payback for old injustices. They are there because they were considered great in their own times and even greater in ours.

Removing their portraits, hauling down their statues or marginalising their works will simply ensure that universities help to increase the already prodigious stock of ignorance in the world.