Horrible Histories Author Terry Deary On His First Book For Adults
The best-selling author of the hugely successful Horrible Histories series, North East-based Terry Deary, finally has a history book for grown-ups
Children have been reading Horrible Histories for more than three decades, and with stage adaptations, exhibitions and the ever-popular, award-winning CBBC TV series, their children (and even grandchildren) remain fans. But we’re surprised to learn that Terry’s writing was, as he puts it, ‘a big mistake’. ‘All I ever wanted to do was be a country music singer and I was developing a career quite well in the early ‘70s,’ he says. ‘My second career choice of being a professional actor came along in 1972 and I moved to Wales to take up a role in a community theatre group.’
The theatre group wanted to tell stories about the people in their community. ‘Of course you couldn’t just pick a book off the shelf that tells the story of a Welsh valley being flooded, so we had to make up our own,’ says Terry. ‘We had lots of ideas but they didn’t have much shape and we discovered, by accident, that I was the one that could see structure, and while I didn’t write the dialogue necessarily, I would end up assembling the play.’
One summer Terry was asked to write a play for a schools tour called The Custard Kid. 'It was very successful, but after six weeks we packed the costumes away and all those characters that I’d created effectively just disappeared, which seemed a shame,’ he says. ‘By then I’d moved to Lowestoft in Suffolk and I came across a book in the library called How To Be a Writer and Get Published. It said, first of all, write about something you know. So I turned the play into a children’s novel. That novel (after 23 rejections) was published the 24th time, and so I was on my way. Then I became a reliable writer.’
Terry describes himself as a ‘journeyman’. ‘It’s a hack if you like,’ he explains. ‘A safe pair of hands. After writing a dozen or more books, the dynamic changed. Publishers would come to me and say “we’ve got titles to fill, will you write these books for us?”.’ So whilst teaching, Terry began writing for commission and the Horrible Histories series of books soon followed.
Terry has sold 38 million books in 45 languages. Horrible Histories was a success right from the beginning. ‘I’ll admit, I didn’t expect it to be going 31 years later. That is unusual – that’s probably exceeded even my expectations, but you’ve got to expect it to be a success otherwise you wouldn’t sit down and write,’ he says. ‘You don’t write a book and say “well, I hope this book does well because it’s quite good”, you say “this is a great book, go out and buy it!”.’
Lots of research went into the Horrible Histories series, but Terry, keen to differentiate himself from academics, doesn’t describe himself as a historian. Arguably, what makes the Horrible Histories books so successful is Terry’s trademark wit, and the avoidance of academic jargon often found in the text books children read in school. Terry argues that he doesn’t actually write history, in fact he writes about people, ‘which is a far more interesting subject,’ he adds. ‘I don’t worry about history, I look at these stories about people and instead of saying “sit there kid, listen, I am going to teach you something about what was permissible and what was forbidden”, my author voice is “cor, you never guess what I found out about this!”. My excitement conveys itself.’
So why has Terry decided to start writing for adults? It turns out his ‘life ambition’ was to write a murder mystery novel – and Terry’s murder mystery, Actually, I'm A Murderer, will release next year. ‘It’s difficult to break through so I got myself a new agent and in three weeks he’d sold my murder mystery,’ says Terry. ‘It’s set in Sunderland in 1973 and it was accepted – which I was thrilled about!
‘I said to this new agent “by the way, I’ve got an idea for a non-fiction book – almost Horrible Histories for adults – and within another couple of weeks, he’d sold that too, which is amazing! I had a dream to publish a murder mystery but now I’ve got two adult books on the go. How lucky am I?’
A History of Britain in Ten Enemies brings Terry’s humour to an adult audience, taking readers on a journey through British history, through the stories of 10 of its enemies who (some say) made Britain what it is today. ‘I want to be able to address people with a more serious topic in Ten Enemies, which looks at the way in which enemies shape a country,’ says Terry. ‘The danger (and the warning comes at the end) is that nationalism can go too far. Yes, you can become proud and patriotic, but if you go too far, you start looking for a fight, you start picking fights… Elizabeth I is my classic example – [there were a series of] plots to assassinate her because she was an evil woman, and what happened? The Armada came along, they beat it, and suddenly she was a popular lady. Our enemies are very, very useful, especially the leaders. But don’t get carried away, don’t then go looking for fights. This is a sort of serious message which I couldn’t get across to kids in Horrible Histories.’
Terry hopes readers of his new book might learn more about history than what they were told in school, in the same way readers of Horrible Histories do. He highlights the importance of people in history, many of whom he says are ‘totally forgotten’. ‘Everybody talks about the heroes and the kings and the queens but Britain would’ve been defeated, not once or twice, but many times, if it hadn’t been for ordinary people like a Sunderland sailor called Jack Crawford,’ he continues. Jack became known as the Hero of Camperdown after, during the Battle of Camperdown, under gunfire, he climbed the mast and nailed the colours to the top to avoid a the flag falling, which would’ve been deemed a sign of surrender. ‘If we lost that [battle] you’d be speaking French and eating Edam cheese, and we wouldn’t have fought at Trafalgar because at Camperdown we would’ve been wiped out,’ Terry continues.
‘And yet Nelson, who won a little battle in Trafalgar, gets stuck on a big pedestal in London and a square named after the battle. Everybody remembers Nelson, nobody remembers a Sunderland sailor – because he’s an ordinary man. This is one of my rants that I have in the book – never forget the ordinary man or woman. Jemima Nicholas in Wales who drove off the French invasion, or the tragic story about Henry Tandey, the ordinary private soldier in World War One who failed to kill a German soldier when he had him at his mercy. That German solider was Adolf Hitler and if he’d shot him, the whole world would’ve changed – millions of lives would’ve been saved. In history, the ordinary people and their stories are fascinating – that’s what I’ll be telling at Durham Book Festival… stories (which is what I love to do) and maybe enlightening [guests] a bit as well. “Cor, I never knew that,” they will say.’
As well as writing, Terry’s still performing, and whilst reflecting on this part of his career he shares an anecdote from a trip to Sunderland Empire when he was just six. ‘There were these musical variety shows and the group performing on stage said “would any little child like to come on stage and sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? Because it wasn’t a pantomime, it was a Christmastime show,’ he begins. ‘My dad, who played in a dance band when he wasn’t a butcher, pushed me – he said “go on son, go on stage – you know Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”. So I went on stage and I had all these lights on me and this audience applauding me and I got paid with free ice cream. I thought, this is what I really want to do with my life, be a performer – a singer or an actor – and I became both, but both got pushed to the side.’
- The deadliest enemy of modern British monarchs: cigarettes killed every monarch in the 20th century.
- The time we pickled a war hero: Nelson was kept fresh in a cask of brandy and the news was sent home aboard HMS Pickle (yes, really).
- The worst defeat in British naval history: The Dutch sailed into the main Royal Navy dock and burned or captured 13 prime ships, then added insult to injury by towing away the flagship of the English fleet. The Dockyard commissioner was actually there but chose to save his collection of model ships instead of the real ones.
