I’ll send my Enormous Crocodile to eat you if you edit my work, Dahl warned publisher

ROALD DAHL threatened never to write another word if his publishers ever altered his words, vowing to send his Enormous Crocodile to get them.

The writer’s fury has emerged in the wake of the row over Puffin censoring his famous children’s stories.

Hundreds of changes had been made to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and more than a dozen other titles, removing many descriptions relating to weight, mental health and gender to minimise offence.

The editing was criticised by many, including Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister and novelist Salman Rushide.

The Queen urged authors to write “unimpeded by those who may wish to curb the freedom of your expression”.

On Friday Puffin announced that it will reissue his books uncensored. Dahl made his comments 40 years ago, in a recorded conversation with Francis Bacon, the painter, in which he anticipated the impact that “political correctness” might have on his work.

He told Bacon: “I’ve warned my publishers that if they later on so much as change a single comma in one of my books, they will never see another word from me. Never! Ever!”

The writer, who had Norwegian roots, added: “When I am gone, if that happens, then I’ll wish mighty Thor knocks very hard on their heads with his Mjolnir.

“Or I will send along the Enormous Crocodile to gobble them up.”

In their conversation, recorded by Bacon’s friend Barry Joule in 1982 at Dahl’s home in Buckinghamshire, Bacon tells the children’s writer: “There must be no changes to an artist’s original work when he is dead for any reason whatsoever.” Dahl, who died eight years later, aged 74, replies: “I just hope to God that will never happen to any of my writings as I am lying comfortably in my Viking grave.”

Joule regularly recorded his conversations with Bacon and had been fortunate enough to transcribe the one with Dahl shortly before the tape was inadvertently destroyed.

The encounter at Great Missenden followed the publication of Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes and, during their conversation, he anticipates future rows over his colourful and evocative language.

Joule told The Guardian: “Fully puffed up on the subject, Dahl informed us, ‘You know, it was Marx and Lenin who commenced this political correctness rubbish way back in 1917, and by God it’s creeping into this country’.”