Ahead of his York Georgian Festival appearance this month, we touched base with the acclaimed Horrible Histories author to talk murder, warfare, and life in the Georgian era…
Hello Terry. What would life have been like for the average, working-class Yorkie during the Georgian era?
Life for the majority – the underclasses – would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. The writer Defoe said there were seven classes of people in Britain, from Class 7, The Miserable, ‘who really suffer want’; in 1757, they included a mother and two children in Cumberland who had no bread and tried to survive on horse bran. They were all found dead one morning, and the children had straw in their mouths. The list went up to Class 1, The Great, ‘who live profusely’; people like the Earl of Cork, who whinged: ‘At election time I have to open my doors to every dirty fellow in the county who has a vote. All my best floors are spoiled by the hobnailed boots of the farmers stamping about them. Every room is a pigsty and the Chinese wallpaper in the drawing room stinks so terrible of tobacco that it would knock you down to walk into it.’
Your upcoming release, A History of the World in Ten Wars, covers everything from Mongol guerrilla tactics to the unification of the Ancient Greeks. What do you hope readers will take away from the book?
The most important day in history is tomorrow – if the past doesn’t inform our future, then there’s no point in studying it. So, Ten Wars tries to demonstrate how past wars have led to today’s wars, and project into the future of warfare. Something that affects us all. I also hope to entertain readers, and not just challenge their thinking.
Your new novel, Actually, I’m A Corpse, reprises key characters from Actually, I’m A Murderer. Did the process of writing for characterisation differ the second time round, and did you see any characters in a new light?
The characters are all real people in my mind. I know who they are, but in Actually, I’m A Corpse, I wanted to explore how they got there. How did Mr Brown become an assassin? It’s their backstories I have expanded on. Even though I thought I knew them, they still surprise me when they reveal their past lives, relationships and motivations.
What can ticketholders expect from Murder in the Georgian Theatre, and Terry, if you were forced to ‘knock off’ any historical figure, who would it be?
An entertainment based on the theatre and history of the period, and an introduction to Actually I’m A Corpse. There is a murder-mystery and a look at the men and women who brought sensation to the period.
I’d ‘knock off’ Henry VIII, the man who got away with murder…
Terry Deary presents: Murder in the Georgian Theatre takes place at Mansion House on 6 August. Visit www.mansionhouse.tygit.com/shop/dates/pk/9267751f7695037fd044a5765760c605 to book.
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