The organization said Fleming himself was in favor of rewrites and even approved edits to the book “Live and Let Die” (1954) before his death in 1964. Those changes included removing negative slang terms for black people, such as the n-word, and replacing them with simply “black man” or “black person.”
“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 authorized,” a spokesperson for Ian Fleming Publications told the publication.
“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.”
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