Category: News

Celebrate the RAF Centenary with Grandpa’s Great Escape!

This year is the ONE HUNDRED YEAR anniversary of the Royal Air Force, also known as the RAF! Celebrate by soaring up, up, and away on your own Spitfire adventures! Here’s how…

1) Check out these amazing photographs of David Walliams‘ own grandfather, taken in 1940 during his RAF days! Do you know anyone who was in the RAF? Ask them to share their stories with you!

2) Take the Spitfire Driving Test in The World of David Walliams Book of Stuff. Remember to drive in the centre of the road so you don’t knock the wings off!

3) Read Grandpa’s Great Escape to your own Grandpa!

4) Watch 100 aircraft fly over Buckingham Palace – if you’re in London, just look up around 1:00 p.m. (BST)! You can also catch it on TV.

Grandpa's Great Escape - Propeller - GIF

5) Dress up like Grandpa! Here’s how to make your own Grandpa medals and moustache at home while you’re waiting for your official costume to arrive.

6) Visit a museum! Did you know that the Imperial War Museum featured in Grandpa’s Great Escape is a real place? If you are visiting London, England, you can go there to learn about real RAF pilots, dress up in uniform, and see the aircraft up close.

7) Buddy up and take turns talking about the most THRILLING moments from Grandpa’s Great Escape, or ask your teacher to print some of these free classroom activities for you to try at school!

Up, up and away…..! 

The Great Big World of David Walliams Quiz

Have you spent your precious youth reading David Walliams’ books? Think you are the best Superfan of all the Superfans? Can you name all of the Walliams books where Raj makes an appearance?

Yes?

Then we have a challenge for you! A GREAT BIG challenge.

Sharpen your pencils and sharpen your wits and prepare for THE GREAT BIG WORLD OF DAVID WALLIAMS QUIZ!

TOP TIPS:

Download and print the quiz and host a quiz at your school!
For an extra challenge, use the questions to make a kahoot and invite fellow schools to play, too!

ANSWERS (for Competitive Colin, Mr. Big, Quiz Masters and teachers):

You can download the answers here, but don’t peek until you’ve given the quiz your best go!

Hay Festival welcomes David Walliams!

Hey, Hay Festival-goers! David Walliams will be taking to the stage this May in South Wales as he celebrates ten glorious years of publishing.

If you’re new to Hay Festival, it’s a fabulous event where writers, artists, academics, thinkers and performers entertain and inspire their audience to reimagine their world. Speaking to a packed audience, David Walliams will be sharing the stories behind the stories, talking about the inspiration for his best-loved characters, reading extracts from some of his favourite titles and answering questions from the audience.

He’s written quite a lot since his very first novel, The Boy in The Dress, so he’ll have no shortage of characters, plots and stories to talk about. So, there might be a mention of the characters from The World’s Worst Children series, a whiff of his inspiration for Mr Stink and perhaps a little something from his bestselling novel Bad Dad. You’ll have to wait and see!

The event is sold out, but watch this space for little snippets and photos from the event! And if you’re one of the lucky people with tickets, please drop us a line on Facebook and share your story, photos or videos from the festival.

More about the event:

This year’s Hay Festival will run from 24 May until 3 June in a beautiful tented village on the edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park in South Wales (UK). David Walliams will be at the Hay Festival Tata Tent on Saturday 26 May 2018 at 10am.

For more information visit the Hay Festival website.

Celebrating ten wonderful Walliams years!

Can you believe David Walliams has been writing books for a whole TEN YEARS?

That’s a very long time. Some of you reading this might not even be ten years old!

And it’s a lot of books.

David Walliams has actually sold over 23 million copies of all the books he’s written during that time! That’s more than the number of out-of-date products in Raj’s shop.

There’ll be lots going on throughout the year, so stayed tuned for more details. There might just be a helicopter tour involved, lots of school visits and even a Walliams Week.

But first, something so exciting you’ll be racing out to your nearest bookshop.

We have released extra-special gift editions of Mr Stink and Gangsta Granny in FULL COLOUR with gorgeous shiny covers and illustrations that no-one has ever seen before!

Imagine Gangsta Granny scaling a drainpipe in a wetsuit in full colour! Or Mr Stink bathing in a pond while the fish make their escape!

And once you’ve read those, there’ll be two more. Spectacularly special editions of Grandpa’s Great Escape and The Boy in the Dress will be published later in the year. It’s enough to make you wish you had four birthdays!

Start writing your list now of all the people you know would LOVE to receive a copy (and put your name at the top). You can get your hands on them now – but hurry, they won’t be around for long!

Find out more about the ten year anniversary editions here:

BAD DAD is the Christmas UK Number One!

WALLIAMS FANS, WE HAVE NEWS!! EPIC NEWS!

You know we told you that Christmas was going to be BIG for David Walliams? (He’s on TV twice this Christmas with his TV adaptations of Grandpa’s Great Escape and Ratburger.)

Well what we didn’t know then was that it was going to be EVEN BIGGER than that!

We’re excited to tell you. We’re even MORE EXCITED than excited. There isn’t a word for it. David Walliams will have to invent one.

We’re jumping up and doing a Raj-style dance! Because …

David Walliams’ latest novel, BAD DAD, has just been crowned the CHRISTMAS UK NUMBER ONE!

That means it’s the bestselling book in the whole of the UK this Christmas.

That’s A LOT of books. The UK is a pretty big place.

That’s a lot of people reading about fast-paced car chases, evil villains, and Frank and his dad.

That’s a lot of people being introduced to Fingers and Thumbs, Mr Big and Auntie Flip.

Thanks to everyone who has bought BAD DAD, read BAD DAD and told your friends about BAD DAD!

Grab your party hats. Grab your friends. Let’s celebrate!

Ratburger and Grandpa’s Great Escape on TV this Christmas

As if Christmas wasn’t exciting enough already, it’s just got a whole lot better! Not one but TWO of David Walliams’ books have been turned into TV programmes. You’ll be able to watch them this December. And even better still – David is starring in both!

You’ll remember Ratburger – the story of Zoe and her pet rat. David will be turning himself into the evil Burt from Burt’s Burgers, who wants to turn Zoe’s rat into ‘delicious’ rat burgers and eat them. We’ve seen clips from the screening and the transformation is incredible!

After you’ve watched that, you might not want to eat a burger for a while. Thankfully there are none in Grandpa’s Great Escape, which you’ll also want to tell your parents you’re ‘definitely-without-fail’ watching this Christmas.

In this one, David plays the role of Jack’s Dad, a role that may or may not involve slipper wearing. You’re in for a treat as Grandpa and his grandson Jack plan a daring escape from his care home Twilight Towers.

If that wasn’t enough, there’s more. RAJ IS BACK!

To watch Ratburger you’ll need to tune into Sky 1. For Grandpa’s Great Escape, channel surf your way to BBC One.

Grab the cushions, make yourself some popcorn and get comfortable on the sofa because this is going to be nothing short of BRILLIANT!

Record-breaking 100 Weeks in the Children’s Books Charts!

We are over-the-moon to announce that David Walliams has become the first children’s writer to spend 100 weeks in the number one position in the children’s book charts, beating his nearest rivals by over 20 weeks.

Gangsta Granny (2011), was David’s first number one bestseller, a position subsequently reached by each of his novels and his two recent The World’s Worst Children collections of short stories. In 2014, Awful Auntie became the first of his books to also occupy the overall number one position, while Grandpa’s Great Escape became the biggest selling title of 2016, and The Midnight Gang became that year’s Christmas Number One – the first children’s title to achieve this since J.K. Rowling in 2008. In 2017 he has already had four number one titles: Blob (for World Book Day), The World’s Worst Children 2, The Midnight Gang and Grandpa’s Great Escape.

“I never dreamed of this scale of success. Thank you so much to everyone who bought the books and made this happen. It is incredible news but all that really matters is that children are reading and enjoying my books.” – David Walliams

Celebrating David Walliams throughout the summer, David’s Facebook page will be host to a series of #WalliamsWednesday events, in which a new book will be showcased every week. Children and adults alike can take part in a weekly competition, download fantastic activities, listen to some of David’s audio books and even get the chance to pick up David’s book on Amazon Kindle for only 99p! If you’re already a super-fan or even new to David’s books, there will be something there for you in the World of David Walliams.

A message from Raj!

I’ve been interviewing Mr Wallibums about his AWFUL new book, The World’s Worst Children, and I loved getting all your questions for him!

I got so many questions, but these are some of my favourites!

  • Were you one of the world’s worst children when you were little? – Alex, age 8
  • Where do you get the ideas to start a story? – Isabelle, age 8
  • Out of all the books you’ve written, which one is your favourite? – Skye, age 8
  • What’s it like to be an author? – Niamh, age 10
  • Would you write a book based on Simon Cowell? – Danielle
  • What item would you most likely buy from Raj’s shop? – Patrick, age 12
  • What would you buy if you had a billion or gazillion pounds in cash? – Ephraim, age 8
  • We’re massive fans, but do you hope to be as famous an author as Roald Dahl one day? – Grace
  • Does Raj have a family? We love Raj, we want to know more! – Amy
  • Will Raj get his own book? – Donna
  • Mr Walliams, why did you leave Raj out of Awful Auntie? – Sharon
  • Will you buy Raj’s box of curly-wurlies? They’re for a special price and the use-by date is only 1997… – Sam, age 10

 

I can’t wait for you to hear my interview with Mr Wallybottom – or whatever his stupid made-up name is!

 

 

 

David Walliams Joins Syria Campaign

David Walliams has joined a host of the UK’s bestselling authors to raise money for Syrian refugees.

Waterstones have teamed up with Oxfam to raise money for the charity’s Syria Crisis Appeal, donating 100% of the full retail price on a host of bestselling titles…including David’s ‘The Boy in the Dress‘.

The books will be stickered with ‘Buy Books for Syria’ and will go on sale in Waterstones shops from 1 October.

You can find out more about the appeal here.