Some of her students have grown up on the books and ended up taking her classes as a result of an interest in ancient history first sparked by Deary’s work.

Susanna Phillippo is a highly regarded classics senior lecturer at Newcastle University who has an admiration for the books and film. We urge you to turn off your ad blocker for The Telegraph website so that you can continue to access our quality content in the future.

(Figures reported by The Telegraph showed that in the 2000s Deary sold more than £20 million-worth of books.). “They’re cleverly done and do have a knack for picking out the most striking points and presenting them accurately,” she explains. Have Britain’s readers become pocket intellectuals once again?

“I saw Toy Story 4 the other night and the trailer for Horrible Histories looked really good,” she says, singling out a line from the trailer where a gladiator trainer demanded of his protégé that they go out into the arena and give it “CX percent”. Sarah Hadland will play Queen Victoria, 10. Jessica Ransom will play Mary Queen of Scots, 3. “Some popular things tone things down and dumb them down, but actually the Horrible Histories seem to make a good job of putting things across accurately as well as making them quirky.”.

Millennials are held responsible for the death of many things. Who was complaining about the size of his trailer? Run your finger along the contents of the bookshelves my 67-year-old father has built up over the years and you’ll see austere, stern doorstops about grand parts of history.

Lee Child biography review: Could anyone write the next Jack Reacher? Flick open one of the books and you’ll learn about the minutiae of troop movements and the geopolitics behind each decision.

A similar fascination in what we put into our bodies, and what comes out the other end (not a million miles away from the focus of Horrible Histories’ big screen debut) is the focus of a new exhibition about Pompeii at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford – about as far away from Sunderland and Deary’s call for class warfare as you can get. You’ll find lots in Nottinghamshire.
But pick a history book at random from my bookshelf and you’ll find they’re a little different. 1. To enjoy the CBBC Newsround website at its best you will need to have JavaScript turned on. “The focus is on making it seem fun and presenting the facts that are important in the story but also showing you what might be peculiar or quirky so that people get interested.

Which cast member had to get his legs waxed for the film? Ben Miller will play King John (or has played), 2.

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Now, you can count stuffy history books among them.

For a while lots of you have wanted to know who the cast of Series 6 are, and so we’ve put together some pics for you of the cast!

Jim Howick will play Winston Churchill. The raw stuff of human life is the basis of the subject.”. It didn’t necessarily look staid to your dad! Phillippo has said she’ll be one of those lining up to buy her ticket to see the film when it’s released this week. The Courage to Care by Christie Watson review: when will we start listening to nurses? Poem of the week: read a new poem by Simon Armitage, How technology is engineering loneliness – and making a profit out of it, Seeking beauty in the Midlands?

And one reason behind it, I reckon, is a collection of several dozen children’s books written by a Sunderland-based author. Find out when Horrible Histories is on TV, including Series 8-Episode 12: Mayflower Malarkey. In 2013, Lisa Edwards, UK publishing and commercial director of Scholastic Corporation, described Horrible Histories as one of the company's "crown jewels", and said it is at an "advanced stage of evolution".

In fact, it’s furthering it. It’s now official who will be casting who in the new series, which is said to be continued later this year! The quirky, jaunty presentation of them has inspired a generation of historians to pursue their interests, and the style of both the books, TV show and now film combines high-brow, fact-checked rigour with low-brow humour about bums and bogeys. (If you can't see the videos in this page, then click here!

“But remember that each generation finds history again for themselves,” she explains when I point out the difference between my dad’s bookshelf and mine. And now we just wait to see who will next in the sensational sixth series! We rely on advertising to help fund our award-winning journalism. The Horrible Histories series of books have been formative experiences for anyone born since the late 1980s.

“A lot of history teachers are the same – we like all that as well.

It wasn't just history which Hacker learnt about, though.

Mar 30, 2015 May 18, 2015 / HHTV / 6 Comments It’s now official who will be casting who in the new series, which is said to be continued later this year!

Nick Frost, Kim Catrall and Derek Jacobi take leading roles in the movie, which is based on the fourth book in the series.

“It means they have a touchpoint immediately and don’t come thinking history is boring.

But don’t think that Horrible Histories is ruining kids’ historical knowledge.

Afterlives by Adbulrazah Gurnah, review: love and loss in German East Africa. “One of the things Horrible Histories does well is it does both the social history and the big names and adventures,” she says. And that, argues  Chris Stokel-Walker, is something everybody can be thankful for.

They’re personality-driven, focusing on the extraordinary lives of those behind the greatest events in history. The uncharitable might say they’re dumbed down. BBC Films' 'Bill' is the first cinematic outing for the cast of the hit UK TV series, 'Horrible Histories'. The way in which we differ – and the way in which history books in general appear to have shifted – is from the sweeping catalogue of events to the personal and the trivial. “It makes history an easier sell in some ways,” he says.

Seeing that film on the silver screen will be a major moment for an entire generation of millennials – and those even younger – whose first interest in history was piqued by the slightly askance look at important historical moments written by Deary, a former drama teacher from Sunderland. Because children come to history through the Horrible Histories series, it shapes their taste in history for the future, too. He abhors the way his books have become canon and foundational texts for people learning history; and would likely find it odd the way the books have spawned an entire franchise of different branches including the television show, stage performances and film. Atti, a smart and quick-witted Roman teenager, manages to upset Emperor Nero with one of his schemes. It’s a cultural phenomenon that has bequeathed Lucy Worsley cosplaying as Victorian housewives on BBC television, and paved the way for prurient beef-and-belching books such as Annie Gray’s history of what Queen Victoria ate. It is said to air later this year-our guesses are either summer, or early Autumn. That said, they’ve likely made him money: the books have sold millions of copies, and adaptation rights don’t come cheap. The books are categorically not history, and their author, Terry Deary, is not a historian by his own admission.


They look at the past with an inquiring eye.”. The theme of the film is Rotten Romans and it is closely based on the characters from the Horrible Histories book. H orrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans stars a slightly more star-studded cast than the TV series it’s based on. “What Horrible Histories identified is something good history teachers have always known, which is the bits of history young kids like: farts and sex and death and blood and guts and stupidity,” he says. First published in 1993, the books have since become a CBBC television sketch series and, as of this Friday, a film. CBBC's biggest star from Wigan, Hacker the dog, went along to the premiere to get a glimpse at the new film and to interview some of the cast to find out more about it.

If you're a fan of Horrible Histories on CBBC, then you may know that a brand new Horrible Histories film is out now.

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(More about the Series on the Series 6 page). You need to be a subscriber to join the conversation. Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. Find out more, The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. But if you've already read the books and watched the CBBC series, the film has a whole new storyline, new songs and laughs to keep you entertained. Phillippo’s nieces are also avid readers of the books.

So far we know there are three new specials, however it seems funny the popular Horrible Histories would only have 3 specials in a ‘series’, usually consisting of 12-15. She approves: “That’s a good joke”.