James Bond books edited to remove racist references

‘Attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace’

IAN FLEMING’S James Bond novels have been rewritten to remove a number of racial references, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.

All of the author’s espionage thrillers featuring 007, from Casino Royale to Octopussy, are to be reissued this spring to mark 70 years since the British spy first appeared on the page.

Ian Fleming Publications, the company that owns the literary rights to the Bond author’s work, commissioned a review by sensitivity readers of the classic texts under its control.

The Telegraph understands that a disclaimer accompanying the reissued texts will 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.”

The changes to Fleming’s books result in some depictions of black people being reworked or removed.

Dated references to other ethnicities remain, such as Bond’s racial terms for Asian people and the spy’s disparaging views of the Korean character Oddjob. Remarks about the “sweet tang of rape”, “blithering women” failing to do a “man’s work”, and homosexuality being a “stubborn disability” also remain.

In the sensitivity reader-approved version of Live and Let Die (1954), Bond’s 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”, becomes: “Pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought.”

Another altered scene features Bond visiting Harlem in New York, where a salacious striptease at a nightclub makes the male crowd, including the spy increasingly agitated.

The original passage previously read: “Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. His mouth was dry.”

The revised section replaces the pigs reference with: “Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.”

A lengthy passage describing Bond’s night out in Harlem, including an argument between a man and his girlfriend, conducted largely in accented dialogue that Fleming describes as “straight Harlem-Deep South with a lot

of New York thrown in”, has been entirely removed.

The word “n----”, which Fleming used to refer to black people when he was writing during the 1950s and 60s, has been almost entirely expunged from the revised texts.

In most cases, this is replaced by “black person” or “black man”, but in some instances, racial descriptors are dropped entirely.

In one example, criminals escaping from Bond in Dr No (1958) become simply “gangsters”. In the same novel, the race of a doctor and an immigration officer now go unmentioned, as does that of a henchman shot by Bond. The ethnicity of a barman in Thunderball (1961) is similarly omitted in new editions. In Quantum of Solace (1959), a butler’s race now also goes undisclosed.

Detail is also removed in Goldfinger (1959); the race of the drivers in Red Ball Express – the Second World War logistics unit that had many black servicemen – is not referred to. They are described only as “ex-drivers”.

The Bond books have been tweaked before to suit different markets, and Fleming gave editor Al Hart his blessing to tone down sex scenes for American readers. He also permitted US publishers to modify racial references in Live and Let Die.

Ian Fleming Publications said: “We 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.

“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.

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

In the past, Fleming’s US publishers changed the title of Casino Royale to You Asked for It, and 007 was even referred to in the blurb as “Jimmy Bond”. In the strictly Catholic Ireland of the 1950s, Live and Let Die was banned.

The new volumes are set to be published in April.

It comes after passages from Roald Dahl’s books were purged on the advice of cultural sensitivity experts hired by children’s publisher Puffin.

On Friday, the company announced that it would reissue his books in their uncensored form following a backlash.

The author, who died in 1990, threatened never to write another word if his publishers ever changed his language, it emerged yesterday.

In comments made 40 years ago, he promised to send his “Enormous Crocodile” to gobble them up if they did so, reported.