There has been mixed reaction to a university in the UK putting a trigger warning on a classic Jane Austen novel.
The University of Greenwich in England has warned students of 'sexism' and 'toxic relationships' in Northanger Abbey.
The 1817 work follows young and naïve Catherine Morland, and her journey to a better understanding of herself and of the world around her.
Paul told Lunchtime Live trigger warnings are the wrong way to go.
"If I'm going looking for a book to read, I either know what I want [or] what I'm looking for - and if I don't I go and browse a bookshelf.
"[I] look at the back and inside cover and find out what the book's about.
"If it's about a subject that I'm not interested in or I might find offensive, then I'm not going to read it.
The book, Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. Picture by: Ben Molyneux / Alamy Stock PhotoHe said the concern is who decides when a trigger warning is needed.
"The question really is for the academics in universities: who decides, who sets these parameters?” he said.
"Who defines what's an offence and what's not an offence?
"Where does it stop? If something is deemed to be so offensive, why is it still on the curriculum?
"If it is that offensive and is taken off the curriculum, what else would you take off the curriculum? Like Shakespeare?
"Then are you going down the road of, 'We're actually going to burn books so that people can't read them'.
"So it completely makes no sense whatsoever."
'How do we move forward?'
Susie said she believes some material does need warnings for people.
"From my experience of this, I can only relate to my own child, who is 12 years of age and is an African boy," she said.
"We have come up against not only movies but books as well - through school - that 100% need to have a trigger warning on them.
"I'm talking about movies like 'Kung Fu Panda' and 'Finding Nemo' - very child-friendly movies - and also books that are on the curriculum in primary schools that I feel have no place in a primary school.
"My son read a book, maybe two years ago - Holes - it was written in 1998 and was made into a movie in 2003.
"It's about boys who go to a delinquent juvenile [centre]... the story is really good; it's a really interesting movie.
"It brings up dyslexia, it brings up adoption, it brings up abandonment.
"For children of 10 years of age to be reading this isn't appropriate in a classroom.
English novelist Jane Austen. Picture by: Classic Image / Alamy Stock PhotoShe said we "need trigger warnings as human beings, 100%".
"Of course we do, that's why the world is in the state it's in," she said
"I don't understand why we need books from the 1800s: it's 2023, the world has changed and we have evolved.
"If we can't learn from new authors, new books, new writing, how are we ever going to move forward?
"History has taught us this from the past, yet we still proceed to make all the same mistakes," she added.
