Rebel Wilson book published in the UK with Sacha Baron Cohen text redacted

The autobiography of Australian actress Rebel Wilson has been released in the UK - but one contentious section has been redacted.

The publication of Rebel Rising caused a storm in the US earlier this month because of Wilson's allegations against Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen.

The British edition of the book, published on Thursday, has blacked out the text believed to be relating to him.

A note has been added to the page saying the redaction has been made "due to the peculiarities of the law in England and Wales".

A spokesman for Baron Cohen said the redactions represented a "clear victory", and reiterated his position that Wilson's claims were "demonstrably false".

A spokesman for publisher HarperCollins told BBC News: "We are publishing every page, but for legal reasons, in the UK edition, we are redacting most of one page with some other small redactions and an explanatory note.

"Those sections are a very small part of a much bigger story and we’re excited for readers to know Rebel’s story when the book is released."

A spokesman for Baron Cohen told BBC News: "Harper Collins did not fact check this chapter in the book prior to publication, and took the sensible but terribly belated step of deleting Rebel Wilson’s defamatory claims once presented with evidence that they were false.

"Printing falsehoods is against the law in the UK and Australia; this is not a 'peculiarity' as Ms. Wilson said, but a legal principle that has existed for many hundreds of years."

The statement described the redactions as a "clear victory for Sacha Baron Cohen" adding that the claims Wilson made were "demonstrably false" and a "shameful effort" to sell books.

Other sections of the British edition feature further redactions, but much shorter ones with just the occasional sentence omitted.

It has been reported the entire chapter relating to Baron Cohen has been redacted, external in Australia and New Zealand, making the version released in those countries the most censored of any edition of the book.

In the original edition of the memoir, Wilson wrote about her negative experience working with Baron Cohen on the 2016 film Grimsby.