Families and Retailers Dump David Walliams Books After Allegations

By Daniel Okafor

Retailers sold 7,497 David Walliams books in the past four weeks, worth £48,400 — down from 102,000 in the same period last year, when he had a new release out. That collapse follows a joint Guardian and ITV News investigation alleging the children's author used his position to pursue young women and girls for sex, including girls as young as 15. Walliams denies the allegations.

HarperCollins stopped publishing new Walliams books last December and dropped his entire backlist in September. The money is still considerable, though: almost 108,000 copies sold this year, worth more than £702,000, and over £153m in sales since 2008, according to NielsenIQ BookData figures reported by The Bookseller.

What are families doing with the books?

In Sarah's house in west London, Walliams has been a bedtime staple for years. Her children — aged eight, six and four — dressed as his characters for World Book Day. Now the books are going.

"I'll probably take them away and replace them with other authors," she says. "Sooner rather than later, so they don't realise." If asked why, she'll say "that his choices aren't great and that I think we should be reading other books."

Others are more blunt. One mother joked she would burn hers, calling Walliams "a knock-off Roald Dahl anyway". A parent walking past a neighbourhood book-swap box this week found it stuffed with his titles. Sarah hasn't decided what to do with hers: charity shops just put them "back into the system".

For her, the principle is simple: "Kids need to understand that actions have consequences. If something's not right, then we need to act upon it."

Did booksellers see this coming?

Many independent shops dropped him long before the investigation. Helen Tamblyn-Saville, owner of Wonderland Bookshop in Retford, Nottinghamshire, stopped stocking him in 2020. "They didn't fit the ethos and values of my shop," she says, citing what she sees as "themes of racism, misogyny and classism" — Walliams, in her view, "punched down".

The publisher had already acted once on content grounds. In 2021, HarperCollins removed a story about a Chinese boy, Brian Wong, Who Was Never, Ever Wrong, from future editions of The World's Worst Children after complaints it relied on harmful racial stereotypes. In 2025, Tamblyn-Saville turned down an event with him. "It feels very much as if the golden goose had to be protected, despite the clear red flags," she says.

Griffin Books in Penarth dropped his books about 18 months ago over "the low quality of the writing and his frequent use of offensive stereotypes". The Chicken and Frog bookshop in Brentwood, Essex, hasn't stocked him for a decade. Urmi, owner of Pickled Pepper Books in north London, is blunt: "We heard [rumours] about David Walliams at least five years ago and at that point chose to not stock his books." She believes "everyone in the industry knew … so anyone that's only just taking books off the shelf is only interested in profit".

How far does the purge go?

Mainstream retailers moved fast. The Works removed all Walliams titles from sale. TG Jones confirmed it no longer sells his books in store or online. Waterstones said it is talking to HarperCollins about returning "the small number of copies which remain in stock in a few of our shops".

Public libraries face a harder call. "This is a very sensitive issue involving deeply disturbing allegations, and some people may find the continued presence of these books upsetting," said Isobel Hunter, CEO of the charity Libraries Connected. But she pointed to "a long-established legal principle within the sector that all books should be available to the public unless the content itself is unlawful". Most library services, she said, will keep the books until they are "naturally weeded out" under existing stock policy — though libraries aren't obliged to promote or display them. Anecdotally, demand has "dropped significantly in recent years".

Schools are stricter. Several teachers told the Guardian they are removing Walliams books from classroom shelves.

The backlist is gone, the shelf space is shrinking, and the remaining question is whether £48,400 a month in residual sales continues to find buyers.