Terry Deary

Deary was an actor and a theatre-in-education teacher before he started writing, and Horrible Histories came out of the same instinct: catch the attention of children who have decided history is boring by leading with the vomit, the gallows and the plumbing. The series has sold tens of millions of copies and became a television show. He says he dislikes historians and is not writing history but stories about people. In 2013 he said public libraries had had their day, were a Victorian idea, and were taking money out of authors' pockets, which caused a considerable row given that he was then among the most borrowed authors in Britain. He has written roughly three hundred books.