Bernice Harrison meets Terry Deary, a writer who has just added a new city to his Horrible Histories series of books for children
There is, according to Terry Deary, a definite hierarchy in the writing world. When people ask what he does for living and he says "writer", he notes, he says, a gleam in the eye, a definite sense that they're impressed. "Oohh, what sort of books?" they ask, and when he answers in his soft north-of-England accent, "children's books", the gleam dims. As he further explains that he writes non-fiction books - well they quickly pigeonhole him somewhere in the school textbook category and back away sharpish. Deary doesn't have to say that it's never a 10-year-old boy asking the question.
To young readers everywhere, Terry Deary, writer of the Horrible Histories series, is a cult figure. To their parents he's a hero, for his ability to get children - particularly, though not exclusively, boys - to pick up a book and actually read.
In 1993 he wrote The Terrible Tudors, the first in the series, and it became a template for the 30 books that have followed. There are cartoons on most pages, the puns come thick and fast, and the jokes are Christmas-cracker funny. That's what draws the readers in. Once engaged, they get the full low-down on an historical period, from who ruled when, to what battles were fought. As his preference is to recount history through people's lives, the books are packed with social history. Without quite realising it, young readers absorb details of the sort of homes The Gorgeous Georgians lived in, the ancient customs and rituals of the The Angry Aztecs and the complex social structure of The Rotten Romans.
The Horrible Histories series has sold 20 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 33 languages. Last year, Kellogg's ran a promotion on cereal boxes giving away a Horrible Histories CD, with Deary reading excerpts from some of the books. As frequenters of the most stressful aisle in the supermarket know, cereal makers only give away gizmos that kids desperately want - that's how child-friendly the 60-year-old author has made history.
"I'm not an historian," he says firmly. "I'm a children's author." Researchers supply him with the material and he shapes it into the Horrible Histories mould. That's how he wrote his recent book on Dublin, which features chapters on The Blood Dripping Battle of Clontarf, The Nasty 1916 Rebellion and a rundown on the life and times of Molly Malone.
His career as a writer is, he says in his straightforward way, down to luck. He was always writing during his various careers as an actor, performer and arts administrator - his record for rejection letters from publishers for a single book was a demoralising 73. Then he wrote a joke book about Christmas, which prompted a publisher to commission him to write a humorous book about history.
The Terrible Tudors had modest success, but the whole thing took off with his fifth book in the series, The Blizted Brits. When the 60th anniversary of the Blitz was being marked in Britain, bookshops found themselves a bit stuck when looking for a suitable children's book to promote. "[On the Second World War] there was The Diary of Anne Frank and, well, The Diary of Anne Frank. Then they noticed my book on the Blitz, promoted it, and it took off hugely. Luck really."
Deary, a native of Sunderland, lives in a small village in Durham with his wife, Jenny, and their daughter Sara. His schedule puts him firmly in the workaholic category. He works seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, and he doesn't take holidays. The trip to Ireland to promote the Dublin book is about as exciting as it gets. He can write a book a week, and he also writes TV scripts, the most recent being The Six Lives of Henry VIII for the BBC. A few pints down at the local working men's club, a game of bingo, keeping fit by competing in the Great North Run and supporting Sunderland FC are what he does in his very scarce spare time.
"I follow the market," he says of his successful formula. He ditched the idea of doing an Australian history after a wander through various bookshops. "Have you seen how many books there are on Australia in bookshops?" he asks. "Hardly any, so there wouldn't be a market for it. Now Oxford, that would sell, so I'm going to work on that."
For his new book he has broken out of the formula to write something you sense he's really passionate about. The Fire Thief is children's fiction, the first in a trilogy, and it features Prometheus arriving in the murky metropolis of Eden, where he befriends a young orphan boy. It's fiction and so it's the sort of book he'd ultimately like to be known for - a category that fairly, or unfairly, is higher up the literary pecking order.
Horrible Histories: Dublin, by Terry Deary, with illustrations by Martin Brown, is published by Scholastic, €4.99. The Fire Thief, by Terry Deary, is published by Kingfisher Books, €7.99