The World's Worst Children 2 does the double

David Walliams has held off a challenge by Joe Wicks for the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, with The World’s Worst Children 2 (HarperCollins Children's) rocketing by 19% in volume to claim the top spot for a second week. It sold 69,645 copies over the half-term holiday, the second-biggest single week of sales for any book in 2017 so far (the biggest being Walliams’ World Book Day title Blob) and has surpassed the first two weeks’ sales of its predecessor, The World’s Worst Children, by nearly 5,000 copies.

The World’s Worst Children also outsold Joe Wicks’ Cooking for Family and Friends (Bluebird) by 24,820 copies. The hardback cookbook shifted 44,825 copies, making it the fastest-selling Hardback Non-Fiction title since Alex Ferguson's My Autobiography in October 2013. Still, Cooking for Family and Friends was 34% down in volume on the opening week for Wicks’ last paperback, Lean in 15: The Sustain Plan, published in a diet-book-kryptonite November slot.

Michael Connelly’s The Wrong Side of Goodbye (Orion) held the Mass Market Fiction top spot for a second week, while Paula Hawkins’ Into the Water (Doubleday) rowed merrily into a fifth as Original Fiction number one, putting it on an even keel with Lee Child’s Night School (Bantam) in autumn 2016.

J R R Tolkien claimed second place in Original Fiction with Beren and Luthien (HarperCollins), a collection of incomplete manuscripts edited by his son Christopher, which shifted 8,053 copies to take 15th in the Top 50. Another fantasy title, and also set in the same universe as the author’s most famous work, George R R Martin’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (HarperVoyager), galloped into 44th place.

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (Vintage) leapt 40 places to 22nd place, off the back of the start of its TV adaptation on Channel 4.

After 21 weeks in the Hardback Non-Fiction chart, Tom Kerridge’s Dopamine Diet (Absolute) bounced back up to second place, below Wicks—maybe Amazon algorithms helped to give him a leg-up.

In the Children’s chart, the original World’s Worst Children rose to third place, making Tom Gates: Family Friends and Furry Children (Scholastic) the filling in a Worst Children sandwich. Derek Landy’s Resurrection, the new Skulduggery Pleasant novel charted fifth, and only one edition of the four newly-repackaged Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Bloomsbury Children's) hit the top 20—the nation plumped strongly for the Gryffindor cover, with it selling 938 copies more than runner-up Hufflepuff.