We’ve been editing you, Mister Bond...
In the wake of Dahl row, how ‘sensitivity readers’ have tweaked Fleming novels
ANNIVERSARY editions of the James Bond novels have been edited to remove racial slurs from the original texts.
So- called sensitivity readers have been hired to suggest alterations to the decades-old tomes by author Ian Fleming, better suiting modern sensibilities.
offensive references to black people – including the N-word – have been ditched, although dated terms relating to other ethnicities remain. For example, Bond’s disparaging views of oddjob, a Korean, remain, according to The Sunday Telegraph.
Phrases such as the ‘sweet tang of rape’ and the description of homosexuality as a ‘stubborn disability’ are also untouched.
The edits will apparently feature in reissued versions of Fleming’s thrillers, which will be published in April to mark 70 years since the first Bond novel, Casino Royale.
A disclaimer accompanying the reissued texts will apparently read: ‘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.’
In the new version of live And let Die, Bond’s original assessment that would-be African criminals in the gold and diamond trades are ‘pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much’ will have the second half of the sentence removed, it was claimed.
Elsewhere in the novel, a scene in which Bond visits a New York strip club is also sanitised.
The original passage of the 1954 novel read: ‘Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough.’ The revised section apparently replaces the ‘pigs’ reference with: ‘Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.’
The author, who died in 1964, previously allowed publishers to tone down sexual content and racial references in his novels to appeal to global audiences.
Ian Fleming Publications told the newspaper: ‘We at Ian Fleming Productions 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.’
They added: ‘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.’
It comes as classic works by children’s author Roald Dahl were edited to remove potentially offensive language. The changes were condemned by many including the Queen Consort, prompting a Uturn from publisher Puffin.
Princess Diana’s brother is the latest to speak out, saying it is ‘bizarre’ to censor Dahl’s books given that the author himself was ‘famously offensive’.
Earl Spencer told BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House show yesterday that by removing hundreds of terms now deemed offensive, sensitivity readers were getting rid of the personality of the author.
‘Terms that are more accepted today’