Bryson's The Body elbows Pullman off number one spot

Bill Bryson’s The Body (Doubleday) has sensationally leapfrogged Philip Pullman’s The Secret Commonwealth (Penguin/David Fickling) to claim the author’s 11th week as the UK Official Top 50 number one. Bryson’s non-fiction tome beat Pullman’s second Book of Dust title to the top spot by 516 copies, selling 27,269 copies through Nielsen BookScan’s TCM.

If this was the Booker Prize, we’d just say they were both number one. But, of course, those 516 copies matter—Bryson racks up his first overall top spot since The Road to Little Dribbling in 2016 and his first ever hardback number one. Additionally, The Body notches up his 27th week as the Hardback Non-Fiction number one.

The Secret Commonwealth, which sold 26,753 units in its first full week on sale, maintained the Children’s number one for Pullman's 28th week.

Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse (Ebury) was the highest new entry in the Top 50 in fourth place, selling 17,277 copies. Based on the artist’s daily Instagram illustrations, the title beat last week’s other illustrated behemoth—Jim Kay’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Bloomsbury)—by 1,480 copies.

Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments (Chatto & Windus) sold 11,955 copies to hold the Original Fiction number one for a fifth week. However, joint Booker winner Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl Woman Other (Hamish Hamilton) may benefit more from the Booker bounce, with the hardback selling just 415 copies last week. 2018 winner Anna Burns’ Milkman (Faber) sold just 963 copies in paperback the week ahead of the Prize’s announcement last year, and has gone on to shift nearly a quarter of a million print units in total, making it the biggest-selling winner since Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies (Fourth Estate) in 2012.

James Patterson and Maxine Paetro’s 18th Abduction (Arrow) fluttered above Lucinda Riley’s The Butterfly Room (Pan) to secure Patterson’s 41st Mass Market Fiction top spot.

The Kay-illustrated Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was the highest new entry in the Children’s chart, but annuals started making their yearly pilgrimage into the charts too—The Minecraft Annual (Egmont) topped Children’s Non-Fiction, with The Beano Annual (D C Thomson), The Pokemon Annual (Egmont) and The Official Peppa Annual (Ladybird) among the risers.

The print market was slightly down on last week's Super Thursday-fuelled peak, but continued to post jumps on the same week a year ago—with volume rising 5.2% and value up 5.9% year on year.