As she introduces the latest member of her Gruffalo family, Julia Donaldson talks about storytelling, loss and the worries that come with being Britain’s all-time bestselling author
In 1999 a journalist asked a then-unknown author to share her millennium wish. The author, who was 51 years old and had published only one book before, said she hoped her new one, out that year, would become a classic. “But then straight away I said: ‘Only joking!’ Because I didn’t want to sound full of myself, and I certainly didn’t think the wish would come true,” she remembers today.
That author is Julia Donaldson; the book she published in 1999 was The Gruffalo; and, as you hardly need telling, her wish did indeed come true. And how. Since its publication, more than 18.2m copies of The Gruffalo and its sequel have sold worldwide. The Gruffalo’s Child was published in 2004, and together these tales of the terrible creature with terrible claws, and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws, have helped Donaldson to sell more than 50m books in the UK. In 2025 she was named the country’s bestselling author – across all genres, children’s and adult’s – since records began.