Here are some children’s authors
favourite villains:

Dominic Barker
My favourite villain from a chidren's book: Violet Elizabeth Bott from the Just William series - "I'll thcream and thcream and thcream until I'm sick." - What a catchphrase.

Herbie Brennan
My favourite villain of all time is Mr Burns from The Simpsons, but that's hardly literature. My favourite literary villain is the Devil, as manifest in Faust or Freddie's Book, but that's hardly children's literature. My favourite children's villian is the Mekon from Dan Dare in the Eagle comic. I still think that little scooter thing he flew about on was really cool… Actually Dracula is big in there somewhere as well.

Stephen Cole
The villains I would choose aren’t human! I was always scared by the aliens in The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham. They landed in the sea and set about making the planet theirs. The really scary thing is that by the end of the book we don’t really know much about them – not even a name. All we know is that they are smarter and more resourceful than we are – and basically they’re all over us, with only a glimmer of hope to be had from the not-terribly-happy ending. Brr!

Special mention for the radioactive dust that does for poor innocent Jim and Hilda Bloggs following a nuclear war in When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs. Never was dust more villainous!

Eoin Colfer
My favourite all time baddie is Captain Hook - the quintessential public school English villain - to be honest I was disappointed when he got his comeuppance.

Gillian Cross
Hard to choose one villain out of so many wonderful, chilling possibilities. But surely the ultimate villain has to be Sauron in The Lord of the Rings. Even thinking of him makes me shudder.

Vivian French
No contest. Plind Pugh, from Treasure Island. Ruined my parents’ sleep for weeks and weeks and WEEKS as I heard tap tap tap tapping outside my bedroom window, night after night after night .... Even now a black spot on a piece of paper sends shivers up my spine.

Paul Jennings
By far my most hated villain when I was a boy was Flashman in Tom Brown's Schooldays. He was the worst sort of cruel bully taking it out on a shy boy.

Graham Marks
For me, Count Dracula did it in a way no one else ever has. I spent the whole, very hot summer after I’d read the book, sleeping with my windows shut. I kid you not, I was terrified.

Michael Morpurgo
My favourite villain is the most frightening one, Long John Silver from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. What’s really scary about him is that like Jim Hawkins, the young boy in the story, you like him at first. He is fascinating, clever, completely your friend – then you realise, like Jim, that he is not what he seems to be, that you’ve been completely fooled. In fact this charming old seadog is a vicious murdering pirate, utterly ruthless and without pity. He’s after one thing and one thing only – treasure. And he’ll do anything to get his hands on it – slit your throat if necessary. About as villainous as you can get.

Celia Rees
My favourite literary villain is the eponymous Dracula, but my fave teen villian is Motorcycle Boy in SE Hinton's Rumblefish.

Darren Shan
My favourite villains are the King and Duke from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. You won't find a more base, cunning, scandalous but oddly loveable pair of rogues anywhere else in children's fiction!!!!

Mark Walden
I think my favourite literary villain is not actually a villain per-se. The Patrician from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books personifies everything that I think a good villain should be. He’s cleverer than everyone else, better dressed than everyone else and always one hundred percent in control of the situation. He even gets all the best lines. If that doesn’t make a good villain then I don’t know what does!