A list of 10,000 books banned from Texas prisons includes Homer Simpson’s Little Book of Laziness and Monty Python’s Big Red Book.

But a separate list of 248,281 approved books includes two by David Duke, Hitler’s Mein Kampf and a book called “the Bible of neo-Nazism”.

Terri Burke, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Texas, told The Dallas Morning News that prisoners should have the right to read whatever books they want to.

Ms Burke said: “There’s a lot of rights prisoners give up, but they shouldn’t have to give up that one.

“Adolf Hitler and David Duke should be there just as much as Salman Rushdie and Alice Walker.”