Horrible Histories creator Terry Deary: ‘What's the use of universities?'

Telegraph

01-06-2025

One day, it dawned on Terry Deary that his favourite crime novels are overrun with characters who have heaps of money, or a degree, or both. ­' Agatha Christie, Lord Peter ­Wimsey, the golden age of crime writing – it's pure Establishment,' he says. The same holds true for his contemporary standbys, Anthony Horowitz ('That man is a genius') and Simon Brett. By contrast, says Deary – who is better known as the brains behind the Horrible Histories series for children – in Actually, I'm a Murderer, his first adult crime novel, 'only about two out of 20 characters went to university'.
This will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Horrible Histories. Those books, 70-odd titles that have together sold some 30 million copies, have enlivened great tracts of the past for generations of children by relaying with irresist­ible delight the viscera of history and the experience of the common man. In them, monarchs and world leaders are usually depicted as mon­sters or figures of fun: the Romans are 'evil'; the Tudors, tyrants. Deary reserves a particular loathing for Elizabeth I, and he is not at all a fan of the British Empire. 'I get a lot of abuse for it,' he tells me; he's even been accused of 'poisoning the minds of children. But I can't believe anyone would poss­ibly justify the British Empire.'
Thirty-two years after the publication of the first Horrible Histories book, Deary says he's done with writing children's books. 'I've written hundreds of them. There's another mountain to climb now.' Actually, I'm a Murderer is the first instalment in what he hopes will develop into a long-running series (he's already written book two) ­featuring John Brown, an assassin-for-hire in 1970s Sunderland, where Deary grew up.
The premise inverts the classic crime thriller setup: we know whodunnit from the beginning; the fun lies in the protracted game of cat and mouse between Brown and the pol­ice who, in the first book at least, Deary paints as incompetent, sexist and bigoted. 'Only the men,' he cor­rects me – the hero of the novel, Aline, is a policewoman fighting her repulsive, handsy colleague for promotion.
'Female police are underrated. When I published a murder mystery for young adults 20 years ago, the editor made me tone down the incompetence of the book's bent policeman,' he adds. 'I had to make the police look better and focus on solving the mystery. I don't think you would get that today.'
In fact, Deary is quite a fan of the police, despite having been 'beaten blue' by them when he was a 'naughty nipper'; his dad ran a butcher's shop and Deary says his impoverished childhood 'in a postwar slum' taught him 'how real people lived'. I ask him what he thinks of the Metropolitan Police today, hit by a string of appalling scandals. 'Police are human beings. No one can live up to the expectations that are placed on the police.'
Deary, who lives in County Durham with his wife, Jenny, with whom he has one grown-up ­daughter, was already a successful children's author when he was commissioned to do a history joke book in the early 1990s. He had begun writing in 1976 while working as a drama teacher in Suffolk. He maintains he didn't know much history at the time, although he studied it at A-Level. But then, his intention was never to educate.
'I didn't set out to enlighten their little minds or even get them to read,' he says. 'That just happened.' His main influence was his previous career as an actor: he had spent a few years in the early 1970s with Theatr Powys, in Wales. 'The aim of drama is to answer one ­question only – why do people behave the way they do? I applied that to my books. Look how they behaved in the past and learn from that.'
Today, Horrible Histories is part of the cultural landscape – widely read in schools and embraced by the middle classes. 'Isn't that sickening?' says Deary. 'It's like Mick Jagger. He presents himself as anti-Establishment and then he accepts a knighthood. I hope I never sell out like that.'
Fair enough, but the brand is already enormously lucrative – there are theatre, film and tele­vision adaptations, and even a Horrible Histories interactive cruise along the Thames, for which Deary writes the voiceover. Is he worried that the brand's original rebel spirit is becoming diluted? 'Horrible Histories is not my brand. I just write the books,' he says. 'And I take no credit for the spin-offs.'
He rejects, too, the suggestion that Horrible Histories inculcate an inherently flippant attitude towards the past. 'You forget how boring history books for children were before I came along. Endless parents tell me their child never read a book until they picked up Horrible Histories. Although when people tell me that thanks to my books they studied history at university, I say 'Don't blame me, mate', because what use are universities?'
Deary can come across as a bit of a throwback 1980s anarchist. He's fam­ously against the education system, partly because he was caned rep­eatedly at his primary school. 'I'm against schooling. Not against education,' he clarifies. 'But you need to get rid of the muppets in White­hall who write the curriculum which applies to every child in this country, when they wouldn't know a child from Newcastle or Sunderland if it thumped them on the kneecap.'
He spits at whatever Labour might be planning to address this: it launched a review of the school curriculum at the end of last year. 'It's just tokenism, sorry. You need to get rid of it.' I assume, then, that he is not too concerned by the drop in students reading history at university? He himself never got the chance to go: his teachers suggested when he was 18 that he 'get a job down the pits'; instead, he worked at the electricity board. 'People don't have to waste taxpayers' money spending four years going to this place called university and not working when they can read my books [instead],' he says. I think he means it. 'But it's not my problem. I'm a book writer.'
But surely, I suggest, the facts and intellectual rigour taught at university are important tools both for understanding the counter-imperialist view of history he favours and also for combating the growing threat of AI-­generated misinformation? In lieu of an answer, Deary tells me how when people hear about a mother who lost her children in a bombing raid during the Second World War, they assume it took place in London or Coventry. 'But it took place in Dresden, too. Everyone comes up with a British-educated answer. But it happened to them as well as us.'
I try again. What does Deary think about the ways in which we are rethinking our imperial past – the growing acknowledgment of the extent to which modern Britain was built on profits from the slave trade; the Rhodes Must Fall movement, which argues for the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford? That, he says, is 'actually quite a good idea. Although they should be arguing to take all the statues down, including Lord bloody Nelson in Trafalgar Square. But it's a minority view. Imperialists are taking over the country.'
Including, perhaps, in Sunderland – Deary left the city in the early 1970s, but maintains close links – where Reform won 27 per cent of the vote in the last election. Why does he think that happened? 'Because Farage is a big personality,' he says. 'People aren't voting for his policies, but for the man. So don't ask me to condemn my Sunderland friends.' Quite the opposite, I say. Isn't it only because such voters feel let down by the Establishment that they find themselves drawn to Reform in the first place? 'That, I admit, does sway people,' Deary says. 'They think the Conservatives have had their chance but they mucked it up, so we'll try Labour. Oh, they aren't doing so well, so we'll try a third option.'
Deary is a tremendous force in publishing – and proud of it: he points out that the paperback edition of his recent nonfiction book A History of Britain in Ten ­Enemies topped the bestseller charts. 'Not bad for a lad from Sunderland, eh?' He has no plans to stop, nor any intention of toning things down. 'I'm an entertainer, not an ­academic. And if I don't entertain people, they won't engage.'
Actually, I'm a Murderer by Terry Deary (Constable, £18.99) is out on June 12