O’MAHONY’S Booksellers on O’Connell Street in Limerick city centre will no longer sell books by David Walliams, the bestselling children‘s author and Britain’s Got Talent judge, after he was accused of grooming and sexual misconduct by women who were as young as 15. Confirming the move, Stephen O’Mahony, director of operations at O’Mahony’s Booksellers, told Limerick Live that the decision was not made lightly.
“Given the seriousness of the allegations, we have made the decision to remove his books from sale for the time being. We fully acknowledge that he has not been found guilty of any wrongdoing and that he strongly denies the allegations. However, we have made a decision that, at this time, we are not comfortable continuing to stock and promote children’s books by an author facing allegations of this nature.” He noted that the removal of the books is not a judgement of guilt or innocence.
He added that the business holds a certain responsibility to customers and the wider community, particularly when it comes to children’s books. “We want parents and families to feel comfortable and confident shopping with us, and sometimes that means making decisions that go beyond purely commercial considerations,” Mr O’Mahony said. “They would have been back-to-back bestsellers for years.
During 2025. of course there was a massive slowdown in his book sales, probably because the publisher stopped printing his books.” He concluded, “After more than 120 years in the book trade, we’ve had to make some challenging decisions along the way, and we’ve always tried to approach them with care, good judgement and a sense of responsibility to our customers. One recent example was our decision to remove Russell Brand’s book from sale for similar reasons.
Over the years, we’ve also occasionally withdrawn books on the advice of publishers, for example where legal concerns such as potentially libellous content have arisen.” The independent, family-run bookshop has been operating in Limerick since 1902 and regularly stocked titles from Walliam’s extensive bibliography of over 40 children’s books. The children’s author, who sold over 50 million copies worldwide in 2022, was dropped by publishing house HarperCollins UK following allegations that he had a sexual relationship with at least one junior employee at the company.
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