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THE DISMAL WORLD OF DAVID WALLIAMS (This piece was first published in September 2023.) Why does David Walliams retain such a grip on our children’s imaginations when his own is so impoverished? His 2008 debut, The Boy in the Dress, a story of a cross-dressing lad gaining acceptance from his divorcee father, was elevated by illustrations by Dahl’s former collaborator Quentin Blake. But Walliams’s subsequent output has offered diminishing returns, and the “World’s Worst” series is, well, the worst. Let’s put to one side the dubious stereotyping of Mr Raj the Asian news agent, the Chinese boy Brian Wong “who was never wrong” (but was later deemed to be “wrong” enough to be removed from publication) and the women who are constantly brandishing mops and “bog brushes”. After all, Dahl was a reliable source of unpleasant prejudices, as the row over “updated” editions earlier this year reminded us. But Dahl’s work has a subversive linguistic energy that cannot be denied. Walliams’s only gifts are for repetition. Characters are scatologically formulaic: Windy Mindy and her lethal “bottom burps”, Terry Tetch, whose “chunder thunder” ends up on his own face. (In The World’s Worst Pets Walliams raises the stakes and introduces a goldfish that can “furp” – “when someone, or something, farts and burps at precisely the same time”.) Original scenarios are rare. When Posy Pooch’s two Tibetan mastiffs conceive, they have 99 puppies, leaving a household of “one hundred and one dogs”. Bertha the Blubberer is a Violet Elizabeth Bott-style screamer, so of course her nemesis is called William. newstatesman.com/culture/boo…