Walliams reigns supreme as Beast of Buckingham Palace takes the crown

David Walliams and Tony Ross’ The Beast of Buckingham Palace (HarperCollins) has ascended to the UK Official Top 50 number one spot without breaking a sweat, selling 100,899 copies in its first week on sale. This is the first of Walliams’ autumn-published titles not to set a new launch-week record, after 2018’s The Ice Monster sold 111,057 copies in its first week. However, The Ice Monster was released on a Tuesday, giving it an extra two days’ worth of sales on The Beast of Buckingham Palace—and the new book was up nearly 9% in volume than 2017’s Bad Dad (also published on a Thursday). The Beast… could go on to have an even larger second week, as Bad Dad and 2016’s The Midnight Gang did.

After Fing was released in February and The World’s Worst Teachers spent seven weeks in the top spot across the summer, this is Walliams’ ninth week in the number one this year. A week ago, he surpassed £100m earned through BookScan, becoming only the seventh author to do so and the second whose career began during the BookScan era (post-1998).

Ross Welford’s What Not to Do if You Turn Invisible (HarperCollins Children's), offered for free at Sainsbury’s when you bought The Beast…, rocketed into 25th place in the Top 50, selling 8,351 copies.

Eddie Jones’ My Life and Rugby (Macmillan) was the highest new entry in seventh place, selling 19,074 copies in its first week on sale. John Bishop’s memoir How to Grow Old (Ebury) also made its debut, scoring 13th place in the Hardback Non-Fiction chart.

David Baldacci’s Redemption (Pan) re-claimed its Mass Market Fiction number one back from Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party (HarperCollins), as Lee Child’s Blue Moon (Bantam) chalked up a fourth week as the Original Fiction number one.

What a difference a Walliams makes—the print market rose 11.3% in volume and 10% in value week on week.