By Sinclair McKay
Published: 11:22AM BST 01 Sep 2009
If any other author had created – and cornered – a slaveringly eager market for beheadings, burnings, impalements, dismemberment, unspeakable lavatory arrangements, lice and plagues, we might tut with shocked disapproval.
But this author is Terry Deary and he appears instead to be universally adored. His Horrible Histories books have been captivating ghoulishly inclined schoolchildren – yes, all right, mostly boys – since the series began in 1993. Terrible Tudors, Awesome Egyptians, Vile Victorians…
“The publishers originally asked for a joke book with a history theme,” Deary says. “They said, ‘Put in a few interesting facts to break up the jokes because some of your jokes are very bad.’ And when I looked at the facts, I found they were much more interesting than the jokes. So we ended up with a fact book with jokes. We created a new genre.”
Indeed so, and one that has had the most extraordinary effect. Through a blend of facts, cartoon illustrations, quizzes and quips, the most tumultuous, violent (and often complex) episodes of history have been rendered for a younger generation that might not be getting much satisfactory history teaching elsewhere.
The books – and their clever focus on minute details from the ordinary person’s point of view – are also enjoyed by parents. And I have to confess that his taut, vivid summary of the Corn Laws made more of an impact on me than the A-level version that I swiftly forgot. This is an international phenomenon. Deary is estimated to have sold about 25 million books worldwide.
“I get students coming up to me saying, ‘I do history at university – I was inspired by your books’,” says Deary. “One student at Oxford recently told me, ‘Your books have inspired generations of young people!’ What do you mean, generations? I’m not that old!”
Nevertheless, Horrible Histories – and Deary’s many other works of fiction, including his new, ingenious Master Crook’s Crime Academy series of novels, set in the Victorian era – continue to be a massive draw.
And now, as well as currently filming sketches for a second series of Horrible Histories for the BBC, and having a First World War exhibition, Terrible Trenches, running at the Imperial War Museum, Deary is shortly to appear at the Bath Festival of Children’s Literature.
Somehow, you’d expect a purveyor of such cheerfully gruesome material to be an avuncular chuckle-merchant. You would not be entirely right. Deary, 63, is lean and, with his softly enunciated Sunderland tones, his manner is wry. Occasionally, there is surprising anger too, especially when it comes to his own education.
“I got nine O-levels, three A-levels,” he says. “But I was a northern lad. Nobody ever said to me, ‘Maybe you should go to university.’
“When I was younger, we were given essays to write. Stories. A good mark was 11 or 12 out of 20. I wrote my first one and got 17½ out of 20. And this was consistent thereafter. But no one ever said to me, ‘You’ve got a talent there.’ I was a northern lad and this was the dark ages.” The dark ages, in this case, being the Fifties. Deary’s first job was with the electricity board in Sunderland. He moved from that to acting with Theatre Powys in Wales and teaching drama, and from that to writing. His first children’s book, The Custard Kid, was published in 1976. These days, at his home in the North East where he lives with his wife, Deary writes anything between 2,000 and 8,000 words a day.
By the way, if either Simon Schama or David Starkey are reading this, they should cover their eyes now. “I am not a historian. I am a children’s author,” Deary says. “I’ve got no qualifications in history. And that’s a massive advantage in reaching my audience. Because historians like Simon Schama and David Starkey just stand on television and lecture you. And when they write books, they’ve got the same lecturing voice. But mine is more: ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve found out! It’s shocking!’”
More than this, though, Deary is profoundly opposed to schools. That is, to the institution of school itself – to the extent that he will never accept an invitation to give a talk in one.
“I get 200 requests a year and the answer is no,” he says. “I detest schools with a passion. I’d rather cut off my left arm and eat it with Marmite than go into a school. And I don’t even like Marmite.
“Schools are an utter waste of young life. Learning things that will never be any use to you. The only reason they are there is to keep kids off the street. They were a Victorian invention. The Industrial Revolution took kids from their families and made the parents work in factories long hours. Then they said, ‘we can’t have these little kids working here.’ So what do we do? Lock them all up in the same room all day and we’ll call it school. I spent hours learning trigonometry, physics, none of which prepared me for life. Relationships, talking to people, managing money, planning your career, how to help someone who has cut their leg open. I have had to learn these things by default.
“There won’t be any schools in 25 years. There will be mentoring. Older people passing their skills on to younger people. Teachers know nothing about life and the real needs of pupils.”
Certainly, the anarchic feel of the books is a reflection of the author’s own anti-establishment stance. He is no fan of the Royal family – he turned down an invitation from Prince Charles to give a talk – or their antecedents. Don’t, whatever you do, get him started on the Tudors, or Henry VIII in particular. “Greedy” and “evil” is only the half of it.
“My agenda is not so much history as human behaviour,” he says. “Why do people behave the way they do? That is what I try to answer through non-fiction and fiction. When you understand that then the world becomes a better place. Because people look at each other and try to understand one another.” As opposed to hacking out organs, scalping, hanging or breaking on the rack. It would make for rather less vivid books, though.
Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories and Master Crooks Crime Academy books are published by Scholastic. ‘Who’s Horrible in History?’, is published in October.
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