BW pictures colorized in book

[AussieMick]

Rob, this is an important issue.
Historical documents are inevitably written reflecting the mores of that time

(Not insulting anybody's intelligence here ... but to assist me, I had to look up the meaning of 'mores' ... the essential or characteristic customs and conventions of a society or community.
example "an offence against social mores" )

So there's always going to be a difficulty in understanding what was meant in , say, the Magna Carta or the Aeneid. Irish patriot Roger Casement's lawyers wasted hours arguing the meaning of a comma in a 500 year-old statute (written in medieval French) ... when he wanted them to simply show that he did not commit treason.

But, and for me this is the crux, if we fiddle with a historical document to make it more socially correct for our time then we will inevitably
alter the meaning and destroy our childrens' and granchildrens' inheritance.

There's many examples which occur to me. First off, the film Casablanca. (Yes they tried to colorize it ! when 'black and white' reflected it's theme!). In the film , Ilsa refers to Sam, the piano player as 'the Boy'. We now , rightly, consider that usage to be a gross insult. But Ilsa was using its then usage dramatically ... to suggest to the audience that this person was a colored person and seen by many as less than adult, but it later becomes clear that this person is a valued and respected friend. Indeed Rick's competitor buys Rick's nightclub and there's an echo of slavery ... but he agrees to pay Sam 10% more in wages saying, 'I happen to think he's worth more'. "Worth more" suggests to me that Sam is not simply a black piano player, but valued as an individual.

As for the Merchant of Venice and Huckleberry Finn ... there's going to need to be a lot of re-writing.

Finally, I recall Orwell's '1984', where Winston Smith's job involves re-writing newspaper articles so that events of the past reflect Big Brother's current views.

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(woops I had to go back and edit a word, so that it correctly reflected my meaning )