First published in hardback in Great Britain by
HarperCollins Children’s Books 2009 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Steret, London SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is www.harpercollins.co.uk
Text © David Walliams 2009
Illustrations © Quentin Blake 2009
David Walliams and Quentin Blake assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780007279050
Ebook Edition © JULY 2013 ISBN: 9780007343829
Version: 2018-08-22
For my mum Kathleen, the kindest person I have ever met.
Table of Contents
Mr Stink stank. He also stunk. And if it is correct English to say he stinked, then he stinked as well. He was the stinkiest stinky stinker who ever lived.
A stink is the worst type of smell. A stink is worse than a stench. And a stench is worse than a pong. And a pong is worse than a whiff. And a whiff can be enough to make your nose wrinkle.
It wasn’t Mr Stink’s fault that he stank. He was a tramp, after all. He didn’t have a home and so he never had the opportunity to have a proper wash like you and me. After a while the smell just got worse and worse. Here is a picture of Mr Stink.
He is quite a snappy dresser in his bow-tie and tweed jacket, isn’t he? But don’t be fooled. The illustration doesn’t do justice to the smell. This could be a scratch ‘n’ sniff book, but the smell would be so bad you would have to put it in the bin. And then bury the bin. Very deep underground.
That’s his little black dog with him, the Duchess. The Duchess wasn’t any particular breed of dog, she was just a dog. She smelt too, but not as bad as Mr Stink. Nothing in the world really smelt as bad as him. Except his beard. His beard was full of old bits of egg and sausage and cheese that had fallen out of his mouth years before. It had never, ever been shampooed so it had its own special stink, even worse than his main one.
One morning, Mr Stink simply appeared in the town and took up residence on an old wooden bench. No one knew where he had come from, or where he might be going. The town folk were mostly nice to him. They sometimes dropped a few coins at his feet, before rushing off with their eyes watering. But no one was really friendly towards him. No one stopped for a chat.
At least, not till the day that a little girl finally plucked up the courage to speak to him—and that’s where our story