Publisher HarperCollins announced it would re-edit and re-write some Poirot and Miss Marple stories first published between 1920 and 1976.

Descriptions of Black, Jewish, and Gypsy characters will be changed to reflect modern language.

The term 'Oriental' will be removed, as will the N-word, and the term 'natives' will be replaced with 'locals'.

In the 1937 Poirot mystery, 'Death on the Nile' Mrs Allerton's complaint about the children will be reduced and sanitised.

In the original text, Mrs Allerton says, "they come back and stare, and state, and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don't believe I really like children."

Once re-published, Mrs Allerton's complaint will be that "they come back and stare, and stare. And I don't believe I really like children."

In the 1964 Miss Marple tale, 'A Caribbean Mystery', the amateur sleuth describes the hotelier smiling with "such lovely white teeth", but that description will be removed entirely.

This is the first time Agatha Christie's novels have been changed but her book published in 1939, And Then There Were None once had a different title.

It was re-published in 1977 with the new title to remove a racist reference to Indians.

The updates follow similar sensitivity changes to books by Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming.