Author becomes first debut novelist to score Christmas number one
(PA)
Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club has become the first debut novel to score a Christmas number one.
The Pointless host’s mystery, about a group of pensioners who set about solving the murder of a property developer in a luxury Kent retirement village, beat Barack Obama to the top the festive chart.
The novel sold 134,514 copies in the week ending December 19, according to sales monitor Nielsen BookScan.
Richard Osman (Matt Crossick/PA)
This was more than twice as many as A Promised Land, the first volume of the former US president’s memoirs of his time in office, which sold 66,531.
A Promised Land sold 66,531 copies in the week to 19 December, not enough for the former US president to match his wife Michelle Obama’s feat two years ago, when she took the UK’s Christmas crown. The last adult novel to be Christmas No 1 was Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol in 2009.
Osman also beat David Walliams, who has been the No 1 author for three of the last four Christmases. His latest children’s novel, Code Name Bananas, which is set during the second world war, came in third having sold 55,129 copies, while Pinch of Nom food bloggers Kate Allinson and Kay Featherstone’s third cookbook, Quick and Easy, came in fourth.
Children s writer David Walliams on his latest hero, a gorilla
12 Dec, 2020 02:00 AM
4 minutes to read
By: Briar Lawry
Beloved children s author David Walliams talks to Briar Lawry about his latest hero, a gorilla called Gertrude
Code Name Bananas is your fourth kids book this year. But where did this particular story idea pop up from?
My parents and grandparents lived through World War II and growing up I heard lots of incredible stories. War is not a natural setting for a funny book but I felt by putting a gorilla at the heart of the story there would be as many laughs as adventures.