The success is nothing the chart-topping author isn’t used to, her bestselling title The Tiger Who Came to Tea (above), has sold over five million copies since its publication in 1968.

In 2002, Judith broke hearts by killing off her calamity-prone Cat by publishing Goodbye Mog. Talking to the Guardian at the time she said: “I didn’t think of it so much in terms of “That’s an end to Mog,” though I think it is.

“I’ve done enough Mog books – you know, drawing all those stripes became very tedious. I wished sometimes I’d made her a plain-coloured cat. But it wasn’t so much that I wanted to kill her off, as that I wanted to say something about dying and being remembered.”

Judith Kerr’s new Mog book tops the adult best-seller charts after selling 39 copies per minute