On March 26, I wrote a long editorial letter-nine single-spaced typewritten pages-to Roald, with all sorts of questions. You start moving big things, but, in the end, you focus on the smallest details. Eventually he agreed and the two chapters disappeared, but not forever.Д«y March, The Witches was coming together, and it was time to drop down to the next level. Roald disagreed, strongly, and we argued about it. They were good stories, but I didnвЂ™t think they belonged in this book. One significant change involved two chapters about problems the hero had at school. Our early conversations and the revisions Roald made had to do with the shape of the story, the major characters, how the story began, how it ended, and what was missing. Within hours I received calls from both RoaldвЂ™s agent, Murray Pollinger, and his British publisher, Tom Maschler, saying time was of the essence. We discussed the revision over the phone while he was in Barbados. In fact, IвЂ™ve never worked harder or faster, because I was determined to get it off my mind before leaving for Barbados.вЂќ It has, as you can imagine, been done at some speed.

I came back to America and on February 4 received a revised manuscript with this note: вЂњThis one, thanks to you, now has a far better shape and form. Once I said IвЂ™d thought the story was terrific, we were off and running. I was nervous, but I had already discovered that with Roald all I had to do was ask good questions and leave it to him to come up with answers. The manuscript was good but still very rough, so I just asked a lot of questions. That night I read the manuscript and then read it again the next day before getting back on a train to Great Missenden in the afternoon. No one else had read it, not even his agent or his British publisher. It was a manuscript titled War on Witches. Imagine if the BFG had knocked on your door! That afternoon Roald Dahl had dropped off a package for me. A day or two later, after IвЂ™d gotten back to the flat in London where I was staying, my hostess was atwitter. Then he excused himself to go take a nap, or, as he would say, вЂњhave a kip.вЂќ His gardener drove me back to the station, and that was that. We drove back to Gipsy House, had lunch, and chatted about this and that for a couple of hours. I was in London on business and took the train out to Great Missenden, where he met me. Naturally, I wanted to meet him in person. WeвЂ™d done all our work on The BFG by correspondence. This fall Farrar, Straus and Giroux is publishing a 30th-anniversary edition of The Witches, and they asked me to write a brief reminiscence of working with Roald on the book as an afterword. Working on this book provided the occasion for me to go to Great Missenden, the small town where Roald lived, and visit him at his home, Gipsy House. It was an enormously productive period: in all we worked on eight books together, the first The BFG, the last Matilda. I was Roald DahlвЂ™s editor from about 1981 to 1987: at the time I was president and publisher at Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers.

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