Writing a wrong

CONSIDERING he once said history was about as exciting as a hibernating tortoise, Terry Deary has managed to build quite an impressive career out of it.

The best-selling author and actor from Sunderland, famous for his Horrible Histories series, has just published his latest book, Put Out The Light.

It is his 200th book (he’s also got an idea for a film version), but a break is the last thing on his mind. He’s only had three holidays in the past 30 years and has never been abroad (apart from Jersey). Deary says he’d rather be put in a straight-jacket and padded cell than sit on a beach for two weeks. “I can’t bear holidays,” he says. “I get boring, boring invitations to go to conferences in Hong Kong and I tell them to bog off. There is so much of Britain to explore. If I lived to be 1,000, I could never cover Britain.

Why would I want to go to India when I’ve never been to Plymouth?”

His latest book, Put Out The Light, has been timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Blitz.

Set in 1940 in the run-up to the Sheffield Blitz, it explores the friendship of young people caught up in the war, linking the fates of children in Sheffield and Dachau.

“There is a perception that the Blitz was something that just happened in London and I wanted to bring in Sheffield and the German perspective,” says Deary. “The Germans suffered far more from bombing than we did and it’s about time people realised this.”

Although he was born after the war, in 1946, Deary remembers rationing and playing on bomb sites, growing up in the slums of Sunderland.

He worked in his father’s butchers shop as a boy, preferring it to school, where he was beaten and bullied. He was first caned at the age of four and still gets just as riled by teaching even today.

“It is utterly, utterly, dire,” he says. “History teachers are driven by a curriculum written by morons. I hate teachers.”

Deary has almost as great a talent for winding people up as he does for writing. He recently made headlines for calling historians “seedy”

and “devious”, infuriating broadcaster and historian David Starkey so much, he branded Deary a “parasite”.

What does he say to that?

“Yes,” he says, chewing it over. “I am a parasite.”

Did he phone Starkey and have a go? “Why would I want to speak to the most pompous, illmannered man in England? I don’t want to get involved with public school twerps.”

It’s not just historians that get on Deary’s wick – he once turned down the chance to go on Desert Island Discs (“fascists listen to that station”) and declined an invitation to meet Tony Blair.

One thing he does have time for is the Race for Grace run in Sunderland next month. Deary has been involved with the Grace House children’s hospice appeal for five years and has huge respect for founder Kathy Secker. He is running five races for the charity this year, as well the Great North Run at the weekend, which he completed for the 14th time.

He’s been clocking up 20 miles a week in training, but says he’s not a natural runner – in fact, he hates it. He took up running at 40, packed it in at 50, but put on weight. After being told by some weighing scales in Boots that he needed to lose three stone, he took it up again.

He now lives by the mantra “health is like wealth – you’ve got to work for it”, and even has an idea for a diet book called Eat Less.

“Like all runners, I feel better at the end,” he says. “I’ve been quite lucky with injuries, runners are always saying, ‘I’ve just come back from the Achilles’, like it’s a Greek island.”

Deary, who lives in County Durham, began his career as a professional actor in 1972 at Theatre Powys in mid-Wales, which is where he wrote the original script for his first novel, The Custard Kid. He is best known, however, for Horrible Histories, the multi-million selling series of history books featuring the funny, unusual and more gory elements. The books have been adapted for theatre, exhibitions and computer games, as well as a major TV series on CBBC.

Deary took part in the sketches himself with re-enactors drafted in to play the historical figures.

His lasting memory is being whacked in the groin by a Viking with an axe, just before he was due to deliver his line. “They were a bit over-enthusiastic,” he notes.

Given the choice, Deary prefers stage acting to TV.

“I’d love to be part of a Shakespeare company and play Polonius in Hamlet,” he says.

Deary’s books have been published in more than 40 languages and he is working with a film company in China on an animated TV series which will be broadcast worldwide. He also says he’d like to help develop tourism in the North-East. “I’d like to bring the equivalent of the Jorvik, in York, to the region because people don’t come and stay long enough,” he says.

Writing has always come naturally to him, so what advice would he give other aspiring authors?

“If at first you don’t succeed, give up,”

he says, bluntly. “A story should write itself.

Everyone is born with a talent, the trick of life is to go and exploit it.”

■ Terry Deary will be taking part in Race for Grace on October 3. If you want to sponsor him, go to ggracehouse.co.uk/donate

■ Put Out The Light (A&C Black, £5.99)