Terry Deary

Terry Deary was born at a very early age, so long ago he can't remember. But his mother, who was there at the time, says he was born in Sunderland, north-east England, in 1946 - so it's not true that he writes all Horrible Histories from memory. At school he was a horrible child only interested in playing football and giving teachers a hard time. His history lessons were so boring and so badly taught that he learned to loathe the subject. Horrible Histories is his revenge. When the very first Horrible Histories titles were published back in 1993, it became clear that history books for children would never be the same again. The appeal of all things wicked, weird and woeful proved to be huge and the series has gone on to become the most successful children's history series in the world. In 1999 the Daily Telegraph recorded that Terry Deary had outsold Enid Blyton by four to one and the annual libraries' survey showed him to be the most-borrowed author of children's non-fiction in Britain - with an astonishing 17 titles in the top 20 in 2001. A Guardian survey in March 2005 ranked him as Britain's fifth most popular living children's author and 2009 saw the publication of Terry Deary's 200th book.