Spoof revivals of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five - including ‘Five on Brexit Island’ - cheers Christmas sales for WH Smith

• e-mail

Spoof: ‘Five on Brexit Island’ helped cheer Christmas sales for WH Smith

A spoof revival of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books – including ‘Five on Brexit Island’ – cheered Christmas sales for WH Smith.

The collection helped the retailer report a 1 per cent sales lift in the 21 weeks to January 21, also driven by strong performance in its travel shops, which were up 5 per cent.

This offset a 3 per cent fall in sales across high street stores, partly because last year’s adult colouring books were less successful.

But the new range of adult parody books were popular Christmas presents. 

Stephen Clarke, chief executive, said WH Smith outlets in airports had also been boosted over the festive period.

‘As a result we expect group profit growth for the year to be slightly ahead of plan,’ he said.

‘In high street stores we saw another good performance with sales in line with expectations driven by our seasonal stationery range and spoof humour books.’

WH Smith now has 1,300 shops in 24 countries. Recently it has been installing Post Offices in stores, to increase custom. Shares rose 7 per cent, or 104p to 1584p.