IAN FLEMING’S JAMES Bond novels will be rewritten to remove a number of racial references as part of a 70th anniversary re-release, the Telegraph has reported.

This April marks 70 years since Casino Royale, Fleming’s first book featuring the iconic spy was published and it’s understood that the entire series will be published again with “offensive references” to characters’ race and sexuality removed.

A statement from Ian Fleming Publications to the Telegraph said that they had “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,” the statement continued.

“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.”

The “N-word” is used several times in the Bond series, and has been removed almost entirely, according to the Telegraph.

Racial descriptors are entirely dropped in some instances.

In Dr No, the race of a doctor and an immigration officer will now go unmentioned.

Another paragraph which has been changed is from Live and Let Die, in which Bond meets African criminals in the gold and diamond trades.

He decides that they are “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much” which has been changed to “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought.”

Ian Fleming Publications Ltd encouraged “people to read the books for themselves” when they are reissued.

The news comes days after it was announced by Puffin Books that Roald Dahl’s best-selling children’s books were being rewritten to remove language considered offensive.