Just because we are lucky enough to live comparatively ordered lives, here in sunny Sussex, it would be dangerous to dismiss events in other countries as irrelevant to us.

The world is becoming far too small a place.

Which is why I felt so alarmed by the news that the Nobel Laureate and Booker prize-winning novelist Nadine Gordimer has had one of her fine novels, July's People, recommended for removal from a school curriculum in South Africa for being "deeply racist".

Ms Gordimer, whom I have met and admire enormously, was one of the most high-profile anti-apartheid campaigners throughout the worst of the apartheid years. She even had three of her books banned by the white regime for being too liberal.

Banning a book from the school curriculum in these times of politically correct infestation is the start of the journey down the road to public book burning. And don't make the mistake of thinking that could not happen here in Brighton. Remember Salman Rushdie's sadly-impenetrable Satanic Verses and the Bradford book burnings by Muslim fanatics in 1988. Bradford is little more than a couple of hundred miles north of Brighton, not 6,000 miles away.

Nadine Gordimer, 77, is one of South Africa's most eminent literary figures, along with John Coetzee, who has won the Booker Prize twice. She won both her Booker and Nobel prizes during the worst of the apartheid years when she campaigned against literary censorship.

Ironically, when Nelson Mandela began planning his memoirs, she was the first writer he approached for advice.

July's People, the book that has upset the bureaucrats in the education department of Gauteng, the province includes Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria, was published in 1981.

Since 1994, it has been on the reading list for Grade 12, the equivalent of A-levels. It is set in a future South Africa where racial tensions have spilled over into civil war. A white family is sheltered in the home of their former black servants.

The Gauteng evaluators, who will not answer any queries about their decision, said the story comes across as being deeply racist, superior and patronising.

Their report adds: "The theme is a racial one and the author does not strongly distance herself from the racism. The novel seems one-sided and outdated."

These geniuses have also recommended Shakespeare's Hamlet for removal from the list as it was "not optimistic or uplifting".

While the liberal literary establishment in South Africa is incensed by the actions of these dangerous, petty-minded assessors, their activities are a reminder to us in Brighton and Bradford.

Freedom of speech and freedom from censorship are precious - even in the less-than-perfect forms we tolerate in Britain.

The race relations juggernaut, rumbling down the route of political correctness, is too serious a threat to us. We can never sit back smugly and think it couldn't happen here.