Harper Seven Beckham's Name Inspiration: Sales Double Of To Kill A Mockingbird In One Weekend

Harper Seven Beckham's Name Inspiration: Sales Double Of To Kill A Mockingbird In One Weekend
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Victoria Beckham/Twitter

Sales of To Kill a Mockingbird more than doubled on Amazon.co.uk after David Beckham announced the book's author was the inspiration behind the name of his newborn daughter, Harper Seven Beckham.

After days of debate on his and Victoria's unusual name choice - a Disney character loved by their boys, a Seinfeld episode, shirt numbers and birth times - David revealed this weekend the real story. Phew!

"A lot of thought goes into our children's names and Harper was a name that we've loved for a long time for a couple of reasons," Becks explained.

"One reason is Harper's an old English name which we loved and one of the other reasons was Victoria's favourite book is To Kill A Mockingbird and the author was Harper Lee. It's a very strong, passionate book.

"That's where Harper came from."

David continued: "And then Seven you know, a lot of people have assumed it's just because of my shirt number that I wore for many years and part of it is because I had so much luck around wearing that number, wearing it for England, wearing it for Manchester United.

"It was such an influential number throughout my career and a lucky number... but that wasn't the main reason.

"The other reasons behind Seven was because it symbolises spiritual perfection, the Seven Wonders of the World, seven colours of the rainbow and in many cultures around the world it's regarded as a lucky number."

He added: "So we love the name, we love Harper Seven. We're very proud of having her in our lives and in our family and it's an amazing time for our family right now."

Immediately after his Facebook annoucement, sales of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' began to rocket.

Sales of the Pullitzer prize winning book rose by 123% in two days. At the time of writing the 50th anniversary edition of the book was at number 36 in the Amazon.co.uk bestsellers list, sandwiched between Harry Potter Adult Paperback Boxed Set at number 35 and The Official Highway Code at number 37.

To Kill a Mockingbird, the only book written by Harper Lee, tells the story of the trial of a black man in racially prejudiced small town America through the eyes of his lawyer's eight-year-old daughter, Scout. Gregory Peck starred in the film version.

A much loved GCSE text, it looks like To Kill a Mockingbird now has a new audience of celeb lovers.

Have you enjoyed the book? Will you be reading or re-reading it?