They reissue James Bond novels and remove racist content

A pejorative term commonly used by Fleming, whose Bond books were published between 1951 and 1966, for blacks, was almost completely dropped and replaced with “black person” or “black man”. In other cases, the references have been edited.

For example in “Live and Let Die” (1954), Bond’s view of Africans in the gold and diamond trade as “pretty law-abiding boys, I should have thought, except when they’ve had too much to drink” has been altered to “Pretty law-abiding boys, I should to have thought.

Another scene in the book, set during a striptease in a Harlem nightclub, originally read: “Bond could hear the audience gasping and grunting like pigs at the trough. He felt his own hands grab the tablecloth from him. He had a dry mouth.” This has been revised to “Bond could feel electrical tension in the room”.

In several of the books, including “Thunderball” (1961), “Quantum of Solace” (1960) and “Goldfinger” (1959), ethnic groups have been eliminated. Editions of the American edition of “Live and Let Die” were authorized by Fleming himself

Ian Fleming Publications told The Telegraph: “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’ve made changes to ‘Live and Let Die’ that he authorized.

“Following Ian’s approach, we looked at instances of various racial terms in the books and either removed a number of individual words or changed them to terms that are more accepted today, but consistent with the period in which the books were written.

“We encourage people to read the books for themselves when the new paperbacks are released in April”.

The movies of James Bond are one of the most successful franchises of all time, with a combined gross of $7.8 billion. The last movie “No Time to Die”which premiered in 2021, marked the retirement of Daniel Craig of the paper.