Terry Deary, 78, has written more than 340 fiction and non-fiction books for children and young adults. He is best known for the Horrible Histories series, which has sold 36 million copies in more than 45 languages.
First published in 1993, the books have inspired a long-running CBBC television series, theatre shows and a movie.
He lives with his wife Jenny, with whom he has one daughter, in County Durham.
Where did you grow up?
I was born in the Hendon district of Sunderland immediately after the war. It was a slum area because it was near the docks which were heavily bombed. Our tiny cottage had one bedroom, a living room and an outside toilet.
Dad had a butcher’s shop in the heart of the most impoverished area and I can still remember the smell of the slums.
The kids used to run around with hardly any clothes on.
There was no childminding in those days so I worked in the shop from an early age, sweeping the sawdust and learning how to pare bones. Eventually I graduated to making sausages. I wasn’t paid but I was given sixpence a week pocket money.
Were your parents badly off?
We didn’t have much spare cash. Our Sunday joint would be what Dad had left over on the Saturday when he closed.
Nevertheless, I don’t want to give the impression that this impoverished background defined my life because my parents were ambitious to do their only son proud. They moved to a more affluent area to get me into a better school.
How did your background shape your attitude to life?
I can see the injustice that poverty brings, and my books reflect that. They are anti-establishment, anti-posh and anti-royalty.
As Primo Levi, the Jewish Holocaust survivor, said: “It is the duty of righteous men to make war on all undeserved privilege.”
Were you encouraged at school?
No. It was brutal. I was caned at the age of four for playing with a toy when I should have been learning my times tables.
When I left school at 18 with good qualifications, I was sent for work experience down a coal mine. Nobody suggested I should try for university. My parents didn’t know what university was but my teachers should have done. For quite a few years I felt inferior.
What was your first job?
Somebody came round the classrooms saying there was a job going as a management trainee at North Eastern Electricity Board at £30 a month.
I got it and they sent me round every department studying what each did, so I could manage them later. But I learnt what each department did in a day, so they gave me filing for the rest of the fortnight. I’d stare at the ceiling and think, “Is this all there is?”
What was your toughest time financially?
After a year at the electricity board, I quit to study drama at Sunderland College. I graduated in 1968 and got a job as a drama teacher, earning £48 a month. After four years I was promoted to head of drama at a comprehensive in Sunderland.
But I hated teaching so in 1972 I took a job as a professional actor with the Breconshire Theatre Company, performing at schools and village halls, with a small teaching element on the side. I barely scraped a living so I rented a cheap flat in Brecon with my fellow actors. I had £1 a day to spend on food.
How did you become a writer?
Knowing we had to perform a children’s show in schools that autumn, the company asked me to write a script over the summer holidays. This became The Custard Kid, inspired by the cowboy films I’d watched in the cinema as a boy.
Two years later I picked up a library book called How to Write A Book and Get Published. It made me realise I could turn my play into a children’s novel.
Was it a struggle getting published?
I sent my manuscript to publisher after publisher and they were all so lovely... with their rejections.
One wrote and said, “Thank you for your manuscript. Unfortunately, we only produce prayer books.”
It’s a question of research, isn’t it?
I had 23 rejections but eventually an old publishing company called A&C Black, said: “We don’t do children’s literature, but we like your book so we thought we’d branch out.”
That was in 1977 and my advance was £25.
What sparked the Horrible Histories?
I’d written 50-odd children’s books so my publishers asked me to write a Father Christmas joke book. It was a great success so in 1992 they asked if I would write a history joke book. The jokes were so bad they asked me to add a few interesting facts.
With the help of researchers, we found that the facts (particularly gruesome ones) were more interesting than the jokes so we invented a new genre – a fact book with jokes, instead of a joke book with facts.
The Horrible Histories were born. And the rest is history (boom boom).
When did the series take off?
The turning point was the publication of the fifth book, Blitzed Brits, in 1995 which coincided with the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. It became the bestselling children’s book of the month.
From then on I was asked to write up to five Horrible Histories a year. At one time I’d written 19 of the 20 most borrowed books from libraries.
When did you start to feel comfortably off?
That was probably when the books were adapted for CBBC. But children’s books don’t pay very well which is why I’ve got two adult non-fiction books coming out soon.
Just one of those will pay something like 12 times what a Horrible Histories would pay. When I point this out to my children’s publishers, they just shrug and say, “Yeah, that’s children’s publishing for you.”
When the books were first published, I told my publishers I was planning to do a one-man show called Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories Roadshow. They said, “You can’t call it that because that gives ownership of the brand to you.”
I said, “Yes, and?” And they said, “Well, it’s registered to us.” I couldn’t believe it.
But I’m not bitter. You learn from your mistakes.
Do you feel copycat writers have profited from your ideas?
There do seem to be lots of funny and gruesome history books now. I wonder where they got that idea from?
I just view these writers as saddos who can’t come up with their own ideas. But in a way, it’s flattering.
I’m the original, that’s what my wife tells me. She says they can come up with all the copies they like, but nobody does it like me because nobody is me.
Terrible True Tales: Egyptians and Terrible True Tales: Romans by Terry Deary are published by Bloomsbury in paperback and as eBooks. His first adult book, A History of Britain in Ten Enemies, is out on October 10 (Bantam, £20).
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