Certainly, my children seem to view the past as a few atolls of interest in an ocean of dullness and, to make matters worse, they don't take much in. Only late in the day have I discovered the solution: the Horrible Histories. How these books – there are 50 of them – passed me by until now is a mystery to rank alongside the cause of Napoleon's death. At times in their 13-year history, they have occupied all top 10 positions in the children's non-fiction chart. But it's only this week – since I've brought home Horrible Histories: The Rotten Romans for my seven-year-old son – that my older children tell me that many of their friends can recite the books by heart.
Telegenic historians such as Simon Schama, Niall Ferguson and Starkey have been credited with the recent rise in demand for history, but the true hero is a lesser-known figure: Terry Deary, author of the Horrible Histories.
Deary, who thinks more like Hector in The History Boys than a modern Gradgrind, says: "Schools don't teach anything worth knowing. The thing about history is to look at people from the past and ask why they behaved as they did. But teachers only tell children dates and kings and queens: it's not their fault but that of the beanbag-brained bureaucrats [he has a weakness for alliteration] who want them to learn testable facts."
His books seem to occupy the same place in children's hearts as Sellar and Yeatman's 1066 and All That holds in mine. Although I can't remember much history from lessons, I shall always think of Roundheads as "Right but Revolting" while Cavaliers were "Wrong but Romantic". Deary considers 1066 brilliant, but not comparable. "It relies on a knowing readership. You can't laugh about the Venomous Bede unless you know about the Venerable Bede. I'm telling children what happened."
Unlike the high-profile historians, he explains, he's not a professional out to unearth anything new or make a reputation by reinterpreting the facts. His mission is to pass on all the fascinating and horrible things he has only recently discovered. "My secret is the authorial voice of 'You'll never guess what I've found...'"
At the moment, he's researching a Horrible History of Wales and can barely contain his fascination. "Did you know that one Prince of Wales tried to escape from the Tower of London by knotting his bedsheets together, but they came undone so he fell to his death? And that after Owen Glendower's victory the women used to cut the naughty bits off the English soldiers and stuff them in their mouths as revenge?"
Deary is now in full spate, attacking historians for their misplaced certainties. "I read one account of how James II made his infertile wife pretend to be pregnant and a baby was smuggled into her room in a bedpan. It was a warming pan: very different.
"How to do they know that Elizabeth I really said: 'I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a man'?" he continues. "It was only reported 30 years later.
"And some still repeat the error that Harold was killed by an arrow. It only knocked him off his horse. He was then set upon; one soldier hacked off his leg and William the Conqueror was so angry with the soldier for behaving unchivalrously that he sent him back to Normandy with no land. That story is far more interesting than the Battle of Hastings because it's about how we behave in traumatic situations."
Though 60, the Sunderland-born former actor still seems to have the mindset of the young for whom he writes. He lives in a converted Victorian pub in County Durham that has "one or two stories attached to it which are so horrible that they are probably not repeatable".
But although he and his readers love gore and lavatorial humour, cartoons and appalling jokes, his books actually contain vast amounts of information and give a vivid portrait of the past: the cruelty, the characters, the grisly lot of children. They even give dates. Sitting down with my seven-year-old to listen to the audio tape about the Romans – narrated by Deary himself – I groaned at his introductory old chestnut: "What did the Romans use to divide Gaul into three parts?"; answer: "Caesars". But then he told the story of the death of Julius with high drama. "I didn't know that," said my son, who is now clamouring for more.
The Stormin' Normans is my son's next treat. If he reads enough of these books, he may not only become an avid reader, he could even join up Deary's gobbets into a narrative.
And I'll be able to add to his new-found passion for the past by taking him to see the touring stage versions of the books.
More exciting still, Deary is in discussion with "a major leisure enterprise" to establish Horrible Histories theme parks – each era housed in a different dome, like the Eden Project. So when children can visit the Terrible Tudors near Stratford or the Rotten Romans at Hadrian's Wall, we shall be having Horrible Holidays, too.
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