James Bond books undergo editing to remove offensive references

The original James Bond novels by Ian Fleming are undergoing editing to remove racist phrases after a sensitivity review. Fresh instalments of the popular book series are going to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the first novel 'Casino Royale' (1953).

The legendary novels from the 1950s and 1960s had terms like the n-word. They are now replaced with "Black person" or "Black man". In the 1954 book "Live and Let Die", Bond's assessment of Africans working in gold and diamond markets have been changed from "pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they've drunk too much" to "pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought."

However, references to other ethnicities and minorities are still present. Some of them are Bond's mocking views of Oddjob and Goldfinger's Korean henchman. Phrases like "sweet tang of rape", "blithering women" failing to do a "man's work" and homosexuality being a "stubborn disability" are also not changed, reported the Telegraph.

The books will also carry the disclaimer, "This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace. A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set."

"We at Ian Fleming Publications reviewed the text of the original Bond books and decided our best course of action was to follow Ian's lead. We have made changes to Live and Let Die that he himself authorised," said Ian Fleming Publications. "Following Ian's approach, we looked at the instances of several racial terms across the books and removed a number of individual words or else swapped them for terms that are more accepted today but in keeping with the period in which the books were written."

Popular children's literature author Roald Dahl's works also underwent a similar editing process recently.