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- The Penguin Podcast: Episode 10 – History Special
Joining us in the studio to provide reading inspiration from the Roman Empire to the Second World War are author and podcast duo of We Have Ways of Making You Talk, James Holland and Al Murray, plus creator of Horrible Histories, Terry Deary
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Episode 10: Transcript
Rhianna Dhillon:
Hi book lovers. Before we dive into today's episode, we've got something special to share with you. Are you passionate about books and you want to have your voice heard by publishers at Penguin? We're excited to introduce you to the Bookmarks panel, a unique opportunity for readers like you to share your thoughts and insights directly with the people who create the books that you love. By joining our panel, you'll get the chance to participate in surveys, discussion groups, and find out as well as share feedback about upcoming titles before they're released. And then as a thank you, we run regular prize draws as well as the opportunity to earn points, points that turn into prizes. It's basically a win-win for any book enthusiast. So if you're eager to make a difference and influence the next bestseller, head over to the link in the description and sign up today. It's quick, it's really easy, and your feedback will help shape the stories of tomorrow.
Hello, I'm Rihanna Dhillon. Welcome back to Ask Penguin the Penguin podcast, all about books and the people that write and publish them. Coming to you from the heart of Penguin Books in London. Now, if you've heard the podcast before, you'll know that along with all of the interviews that we do with very interesting people, we also find answers to your questions along the way. If you'd like to get involved, then we'd love to hear from you. You can submit questions and requests by emailing Penguinpodcast@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk, or click the link in the show notes. So a couple of episodes back, we were talking about historical fiction, but as it's such a popular genre, we wanted to come back and take a bit of a deep dive into the nonfiction side of things.
Later in the show, I'll be chatting to Terry Deary. So you might remember him from your childhood. I mean, we all grew up on the Horrible History books, right? But he's got a new book out for adults coming very soon. But before that, I'm very excited because with me in the studio, I have two absolute giants of the history podcasting and indeed history publishing landscape. Al Murray and James Holland, Al and James host the wildly successful Second World War podcast. We have Ways of Making You Talk, which also has its own festival. I mean, that's the absolute dream alongside Thriving broadcast and comedy careers, they're also accomplished authors and they both have new books out this Autumn, which we're about to hear more about. Al and James, welcome to Penguin.
James Holland:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Al Murray:
Yeah, thanks for having us.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Thanks so much for coming in. So we are going to talk about your new books, but I'd love to know, first of all, what was the book that really sparked your love of history?
Al Murray:
Oh gosh. I mean, probably in my case, those old lady bird history books. Richard the Lionheart type history books, those little with the illustrations.
James Holland:
Oh Yeah. Oliver Cromwell. Nelson
Al Murray:
Nelson. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Which I'm sure like the necessary nuance now, but possibly..
James Holland:
Possibly
Al Murray:
And my godmother gave me a book by RJ Unstead called Looking at History, which was a compendium of all the way through from the Romans to now. Which is illustrated and has all this sort classic Middle Ages, all that motte-and-bailey castle stuff and all that sort of thing. So that's the book, which I remember going all the way through.
Rhianna Dhillon:
You read it cover to cover?
Al Murray:
Yeah. And I gave, I've two grown up daughters now but when they were kids, and I was trying to sort of brainwash them.
James Holland:
They got it too.
Al Murray:
They got it too. I gave them copies as well. It hadn't really changed very much. It was quite interesting. Yes, RJ Unstead Looking at History.
James Holland:
Mine was the illustrated history of the world. It was absolutely brilliant. It was just like this great big book, and I can still remember some of the illustrations from the pictures of the ancient Sumerians through to a clash between the Confederates and Union Armies and the American Civil War. And it was really formative actually.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Really?
James Holland:
Yeah, it was just completely brilliant. It was a history of the world and it was just, I mean, first of all, it was just looking at the pictures and stuff, but as you get older, we read it. And actually my brother and I, my brother Tom Holland and I, we found it in the attic at my parents' house not so long ago. And it was amazing. All these memories just came straight back. We were absolutely transported back to our childhood home. It was incredible.
Rhianna Dhillon:
It's so funny. People always talk about smells being able to do that, but you're so right. Actually, a really good book takes you back to where you first read it,
Al Murray:
Particularly the pictures can really set your mind off.
Rhianna Dhillon:
So to give a really quick summary to anyone listening who's not read these books yet, so first of all, James' book, Casino 44 tells this really astonishing story of one of the most brutal and hardest fought battles of World War II in Italy, the Allied assulet on Monte Casino, which lasted for five months.
James Holland:
Yeah, that's pretty grim to be honest,
Rhianna Dhillon:
Which is not a story that I was at all familiar with. So what was it about this particular battle that made you want to focus on it for your book?
James Holland:
Well, ages ago, I did a book about the last year of the war in Italy. So from the summer of 1944 through to the summer of 1945. Then I went backwards and did the Sicilian campaign, which started in July, 1943, was a month long or so, about 35 days, 36 days. And then the obvious thing was to then do the bit that I hadn't done, which was the invasion of Italy in September, 1943, right through to the battles of Casino in the fall of Rome at the beginning of June, actually, Rome officially fell on fifth June, which was day before D-Day. Would've been the same day as D-Day if it hadn't been for the weather. So I felt it was a gap. And as I started writing the September bit, I suddenly realised this needed to be two books, not one. So I wrote The Savage Storm, which we published last year and is here, and then Casino is a follow up. So that's me done with Italy now. But it's amazing because we all think of Italy as this beautiful place,
And indeed it is, and a very mountainous place. All these amazing ancient cities, the Renaissance and ancient Rome and all the rest of it. But in the winter of 1943, 44, it was just a terrible place to be because brutal winters are always terrible winters in the second World War, and it was filthy weather, loads and loads of rain. I mean, we think we've had it bad the last year, but it was terrible in Italy in 1943, 44, and you have all these mountains and mud and misery and all the rest of it. And in terms of human drama, it's hard to touch really. And I think the bar is set pretty high on how awful the second World War was. But I mean, this is right up there. I mean, it might've been the most brutal campaign in Italy, but it's vying for the most brutal campaign in the war. Full stop. As I say it's pretty grim.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Like you say, it's such a rich cast of characters as well. How do you go about really trying to get into the complexity of the individuals? How does your research take you into that minutia?
James Holland:
Yeah, I mean, the problem is the veterans now are in their late nineties or over a hundred. And really talking to people who lived through, that moment has passed. So what I've been doing recently in my most recent books and really starting with Brothers and Arms, is going to diaries and letters and stuff that was written at source. And actually, I'm such a convert to this because what you're getting is what was written on that particular day. I mean, John Strip, when he is writing about what's going on in January, 1944, he doesn't know when Rome's going to fall. He doesn't know what the outcome of the war is, and the readers don't know whether he's going to live or whether he's going to die. And that's the thing about diaries. It's quite often you're reading them and suddenly the page stops. You think, oh, what happened, ink run out or something? And then he realise she, he's been blown to smithereens by a shell or something. So that kind of immediacy that in the moment is incredibly compelling. And what I've been trying to do is try and put flesh back on the bones of people that have been long since gone either on the battlefield or just through old age or whatever, and bring them back to life through the words that they wrote on any given day during that campaign. And it's been so fascinating.
Al Murray:
As a reader, because I'm very fortunate in that I read the audio books. I do Jim's audio books. And as a reader, it's a very, very powerful twist and to run into, because in the Savage Storm we were following is a German wrecky guy who, and it's his diary entries throughout the book. And then suddenly another person in the book finds this guy dead and finds his diary and you're like, no, hang on a minute. I liked him. He was a sort of appealing character, or at least the insight into his life was really fascinating and illustrative. And he's gone. He's gone. And you do this several times in the new book in Casino 44. And every time it gets me and every time I forget that these are people whose futures we don't know as the reader because we're being taken back to a present moment. And in the present moment, you dunno the future.
James Holland:
Gets me too. The thing is about these diaries and letters, obviously I'm going to be choosing the diaries and letters, which are really good. You're not going to sort of do 'it rained today,' full stop. You're going to do the ones which are a bit more...
Rhianna Dhillon:
Are there many of those?
James Holland:
Yeah. Load.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Oh, really?
James Holland:
But you are going for the ones which are obviously a bit more kind of wordy.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yes.
James Holland:
And so you really get to know these people because they can't help but show their character.
The irritations, the things they like, the things they don't like. And the other thing is there's that famous opening line of the Go-between by LP Hartley, which says the pastors of foreign country, they did things differently then. Well, they might've done, but these guys are absolutely, and women as well, are completely recognisable. I mean, you would absolutely, totally get their characters recognise 'em as people or people that have familiar characteristics and character traits. And so you get very involved in their lives and you start to really care. And you probably know their 23-year-old self or 32-year-old self as well as anybody because they're pouring out things that they probably don't even say to their mates. And so you get very, well, some of them particularly you think, wow, they're really attractive people. They're good fun. And I mean there's this one arterial officer who's just a total laugh.
Rhianna Dhillon:
You'd want to have a pint with him.
James Holland:
A hundred percent. He absolutely loves his booze. He's incorrigible, he's incredibly lazy, but obviously a brilliant commander. He is an artillery officer. And obviously when it's needed, he does it. But he's absolutely not interested in the kind of nonsense of military life at all.
Rhianna Dhillon:
The bureaucracy.
James Holland:
I really, really liked him. And he was such a laugh. And then suddenly he's gone. And it's devastating.
Al Murray:
Well, yes. I mean, Laurie Franklin Vail is one of the people in the book. He becomes really human. That's beans. Well, because he's broke, isn't he? And he's writing to his wife go, maybe if we could get the dog to breed, we could make a few more quid on the side. And you're immediately right in someone's life and the things they're worried about. But also that thing of the parochial being the universal, we all have worries like that each and every one of us. And when you're projected into someone else's worries, it illuminates what people are like. What we're all like. I mean, not that I'm breeding dogs. Not today. That's not today's worry on my today's to-do list. But the point is, the other thing that 80 years after the second World War, certainly after last three decades of commemoration, that people kind of have this idea in their head that the war was fought by people on Zimmer frames, by old people. And it absolutely was not. Yes. All the people in black and white fought the second world war, and that is not what happened at all. We're talking about very young men, very young men and women, people like you and I, although we are much older now.
Rhianna Dhillon:
You're basically in black and white.
James Holland:
But I think the bottom line is we're all fascinated by human drama and something like Casino or indeed Arnhem or Black Tuesday, it's about the people. It's about human drama. I think we're also instinctively as humans, we are nosy and we're gossips. This is why we, people still read Hello Magazine, it's still has a circulation. It's why people are interested in celebrities and their private lives and watch Love Island and stuff. We're nosy. And these books are really about the people. And they're people that you and I would know, had we been around at that time, you and I can absolutely identify with and recognise as people that have the characters that
Al Murray:
Or who you and I would be in these circumstances. That's the other thing. These are citizen wars and you are civilians armies.
James Holland:
And you're transporting them back to this extraordinary time, which has way more prescient and relevance than it did maybe even 10 years ago because of what's going on in Ukraine and Gaza and elsewhere around the world. And suddenly we're seeing that kind of scale of warfare back on our TV screens and in the news again. And the reference point is the Second World War. And those people were going through exactly what they're going through in Ukraine really, or indeed, Gaza.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Well, you've mentioned Arnham and Black Tuesday. Thank you very much. Al's book.
James Holland:
That was such a good segue. Was a great, it was very strong.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Which is, it's kind of a complete contrast actually. It takes place on one single terrible day.
Al Murray:
Yes.
Rhianna Dhillon:
In 1944. And it's about the daring but doomed attempt to secure a vital bridgehead across the Rhine in order to end the war before Christmas '44.
James Holland:
If only.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I know. And so Al, you do bring a different perspective to this story. So tell us about why you decided to tell the narrative in this particular way.
Al Murray:
Well, I've always been fascinated with this battle from when I was a kid, largely because my father, he did his national service in the fifties and became an airborne soldier, parachute engineer. And so a lot of the offices he knew and men he knew had been there or fought in Normandy. So when I grew up, it was a sort of note. I mean, we don't go to football matches in my family. We go to battlefields. I'll accept we're weird.
James Holland:
There's nothing wrong with that.
Al Murray:
Well, and I did an O level history project about the battle of honour. I ended up going to Q and reading the wars diaries. And so it's been a thing in my imagination for a long time. And I always felt if I was going to write about a battle, I'd start with this one if only to sort of ease myself into the business of trying to do it. But it's very well chronicled. It's sort of well known. It's almost a show business battle because there've been two films about it. It's become in people's sort of rough understanding, popular culture, understanding the second world war. It's one of a bridge too far. It's in the language, even though there's no evidence anyone ever said that, but we can't get hung up on that thing. It's too late. Cats out the bag. But I thought the only way to write about this was to try and not write the normal story because it's a nine day battle. It happens in quite a contained area. It's 10 miles from end to end. And I thought, I've got to just approach this in a completely different way. How about I do one day rather than all nine days so that I don't have to tell the story in the same way that kind of everyone else has.
Brilliant people have written about this. The other thing is it's shark infested waters. There's absolutely amazing authors who've written about this. Who have written definitive books about this that have set the historiography. So you think, well, I'm going to have to avoid grasping that metal. I'll think of something else. And the shape of the battle itself after the Tuesday that I write about, it sort of falls into a pattern. The days kind of fall into a pattern. And all the histories you read, the chapters get shorter if they go day by day because they're kind of all the same. I mean, they're all horrendous and ghastly and full of drama, but they're sort of the same. So I thought, well, let's write a book which ends. And being a comedian, very often when you write a routine or a joke, you start with the punchline. You think, well, that's where I want to end up. So I thought, well, where I want this book to end up is saying, what would happen tomorrow? What will happen tomorrow? Nobody knows because nobody knew. You can argue that it's doomed or fated. But they certainly didn't know that.
They certainly didn't think that even at the end of the Wednesday, they're hanging on with hope they're going to be relieved. So I wanted to try and create that energy in the text, the idea that you dunno what's going on. And in order to do that as well, I stripped a load of things out of the way you'd normally write this book, in that normal histories, I say who the Germans are, say who the Germans are making decisions, say which units they're from. They give an overview of what decisions are being made. And I thought, well, the British guys fighting this battle, they have no idea. They don't know who modals in charge. They dunno about Camp Gripper Craft or Camp Gripper Alden or the fact that there's police battalions or Navy people. They just know it's just Germans. It's the enemy.
And they see them flitting through gardens and they see them, they come around. There's Germans around the corner, and they literally don't know what's around the corner. Usually it's a tank. I wanted to put that back into the book because a lot of the decision making that happens on this day, and there's some big decisions to be made, are made in that state where they don't know and they have to be in rough estimation of what might be there rather than the things we know if we've read the history books. And so I wanted to sort of put that back into it. And I found as I went, because I was only writing about the one day, I was completely set free from the usual narrative that I didn't have to tell the story in its normal pattern. I could start in a different place. So start with the only hindsight I wanted them to have was the days that proceed and the events of the years before, rather than the hindsight we now have in bucket loads.
James Holland:
And I think one of the other problems is that when you're writing a book like this, you've only got a book's worth to write about this stuff. So you've got 10 days to fit in. Now Al's got a book to write about 24 hours. And what that means is you can go into a scale of detail, a level of detail apart from including the various component parts, which are fascinating,
Are much more varied and wider than you would imagine. There's this image that it's just parachute infantryman coming surging forward with their Tommy gun or whatever, not a bit of it. There's a whole host of different characters which you are now able to go in, which gives you a much more sort of complete picture of the whole thing. It is interesting. I was talking to Professor John McMannus last night, who's an American friend and colleague of ours, and he's a world leading authority on world. He's amazing on the second World War. He really is. And he was saying, we were talking about Al's book and he was saying how much he enjoyed it, and he said, I honestly think Al is the leading historian in the world on this subject matter at the moment. And it was hard to disagree. Well, how did that feel? Because you don't take it that seriously because you think of yourself as a comedian first and a historian second. But that's not true. I mean, you've just spent five years of deep study doing this with the podcast, and no one knows more in the round about this subject than you do. Now, people might know specialist stuff about certain aspects of it more, but you are absolutely bonafide in this serious man on this.
Al Murray:
Well, gosh, so uncomfortable. Well, because since James and I started doing the podcast together, we have ways of making you talk. When we first started doing it, I got a fair bit of internet stay in your lane snark.
Rhianna Dhillon:
That was inevitable, I'm sure. Which is inevitable.
Al Murray:
It's the world we live in and but there is a bit of me that thinks, stay in your lane.
James Holland:
Yeah, we don't get that now, do
Al Murray:
You? No, no, no, not really. But there is astonishment though. So when I went to university and did my history degree, I did not apply myself to that at all. My first day at uni, I met Richard Herring and Stuart Lee and fell into doing comedy, literally my first day there and said, oh, what are you chap's doing? Said Stuart's. Like when we got a skit show that we're putting on. And I'm like, wow, can you do that here? I have no idea. I thought this was a seat of learning. I guess I've come here, it's really not my kind of learning history books. So then I spent three years basically proud, basically exactly three years mucking about not applying myself at all. One of my tutors was the legendary Blair warden who civil
James Holland:
War historian,
Al Murray:
Historian of the Civil War publish by
James Holland:
Penguin. I think
Al Murray:
He moved the dial on all sorts of things in the nineties, eighties, and nineties, like an absolutely brilliant man. And I was so feckless and useless. And the bizarre thing is my parents have now, he married a friend of theirs. He said, yes, I taught your son. He really, really didn't apply himself over and all this sort of thing. And they're like, wait, he's a historian now. And he basically cannot believe it. It's
James Holland:
Like, what
Al Murray:
Are you talking about? But that's impossible. So my last encounter with history seriously, was not altogether successful or engaged, but I think one of the things I do think I bring to when I write about this stuff is to just follow my nose. So I found this really brilliant memoir by a medic at Anum. And what's really great about his book, he's not a soldier, he's a doctor. He's a surgical doctor.
James Holland:
He's a doctor in uniform,
Al Murray:
Isn't he? That's right. He's a surgical doctor for the generation in a London hospital. They do a recruitment drive for doctors. He joins up and he ends up a parachute soldier. So when he's writing about what's happening militarily around him, he's not writing it from the point of view of a soldier. He's writing it from the point of view of a civilian, and he doesn't know what's going on. He can't work it out. People are rude to him. He doesn't really know how to deal with it and all that. And suddenly again, you have another texture. And there's a brilliant bit in his account when the battalion is with are overwhelmed. And in the sort of military history books, at that point, we were inflated from all sides and mortars, all this sort of stuff. The enemy had our range and we were out flanked. And you think, right, okay, that's your way of looking at it. He says, the men stumbled away from the fire, like animals escaping a forest, stumbling out of a forest fire. And you think right now I can see it.
Speaker 4:
That's
Al Murray:
The image. That was one of the things that being able to include people who wouldn't necessarily be part of the main way you told the story. And also his interactions with civilians in Aum were very interesting. So he has a nurse, a woman who attaches herself to him as a nurse. At the end of the day, she goes home to her mom and dad says, right, I'll see you later. And he's like, but it's dangerous out there. She says, no, I'll be all right. I know the way home. Which is sort of incredible. And he works with her for nine days, eight days and never learns her name. No. And there are those very strange moments, human moments in there because in a lot of the graphy, the civilians have been brought very much into the story. And at the time they're sort of watching and some of them join in and take part and help particularly with the wounded, but a lot of just watching their faces at the window on the street corner watching it happen. And they're sort of like ghosts. And I also wanted to inject that into the story too. Jeep
Terry Deary:
Is what would you be thinking?
Al Murray:
Well, what on earth would you be thinking? Well, on the first day you'd be thinking, hooray, we've been liberated. By the end of it, you're thinking, oh my God,
Speaker 4:
It's
Al Murray:
All gone horribly wrong. And the point of the book is the Tuesdays, it starts off with hope and ends. I mean, spoiler, not a lot of hope. Not a lot of hope. They start on the offensive and by the end of the day it's purely defensive.
Rhianna Dhillon:
So both Casino 44 and Arn and Black Tuesday are available now from all good bookshops. And you can click the link in the show notes for more details. But Al James, while you're here, we do need to ask you some of our Ask Penguin listener questions. I feel like you're going to have some excellent recommendations. We get so many history themed questions. It's such a popular genre, and I don't think there are two people better placed. So our first ask Penguin question is, can you recommend a book evoking the atmosphere in Europe in the Runup to World War ii?
Al Murray:
It is a kalet, isn't it?
James Holland:
Yeah, I like that. Well, that's a British experience rather than on the continent.
Al Murray:
Yeah, we talked about this, we talked about this yesterday to sort of get our lines straight novel as a novel. I think that's the one that's really, really good. Yeah,
James Holland:
I think so.
Rhianna Dhillon:
What's it?
James Holland:
I think it's called the Light Years. It's the first in the Kalet Chrons by Elizabeth Jane Howard.
Speaker 4:
Brilliant.
James Holland:
And they're fabulous. And it's a sort of well to do family that has a place down in Sussex, but also they have a kind of timber firm based in the East End London. And it's all about the three generations of it as they're approaching war and what they're going to do. And the middle generation have all fought in the First World War as well, and the younger generation are potentially coming of age during the war. But in terms of gauging the mood here in Britain, not in Europe, but what it's like in Britain, I think it's pitch perfect.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And what about Europe then? Can you think of any that's not based in Britain?
Al Murray:
Well, Louis Hargan, who is someone I came across in my honour research, wrote a book and I'm racking my brains for the title about growing up as a Jew or coming of age as a Jew in Nazi Germany, which also then he talks to it's eight other people who he knew in his sort of school circle and their experiences of it. But it's called Nine Lives Under the Nazis by Louis Hargan.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Perfect. Our next question is, I loved Imm by Alice Wynn and love fiction based on either of the world wars. What would you recommend?
Al Murray:
Well, I mean, I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but there is an absolutely amazing novel about the Battle of Arnum by a man called Zeno.
James Holland:
Yes,
Al Murray:
It's a pseudonym. He fought in the 21st independent parachute company as a pathfinder. So one of the people who landed there first and he wrote a novel about his experience, the battle. It's a tough, hard, bitten book. He wrote it in Wormwood Scrubs serving a life sentence for Murder.
Speaker 4:
Oh wow.
Al Murray:
He murdered his wife's boyfriend or lover or whatever. It's all quite shrouded in mystery. And then in prison, won a fiction prize and was let out for good behaviour eventually and became a much, much published novelist. The book's called The Cauldron, and this is the book he wrote. He wrote in Wormwood Scrubs, won the Arthur Kler prize for fiction, which was for fiction by prisoners, people incarcerated, won this prize, got a record advance for the novel, and then wrote these kind of action books.
James Holland:
But he disappeared, didn't
Al Murray:
He? Disappeared, went to Malta. He had to get out of the country. When the Pandemic came, I read because it was out of print, I read this as an audio book for our podcast listeners. And out of the woodwork appears his daughter who comes to us and says, thank you for keeping.
James Holland:
And also we should say that because we've been wanging on about Latinos, the Cauldron on a BE books. It was up to 267 quid. Yes. Become a rubbish old pan
Al Murray:
Paperback in the seventies. Yeah. And I've got this absolutely battered. The pages falling out. Anyway, she pops up and gets in touch and through a series of meetings and chats, we've managed to get it back into print. And it's out now with Penguin.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Oh, brilliant.
Al Murray:
Same day as my book September, the republished as republished the first time in 50 years, something like that. And it's tremendously exciting to see it in print. It's brilliant. It's really brilliant. It's a really brilliant book. I mean, I'm very fortunate. I wrote the Forward and in the Forward, I use this analogy. So in the Apollo moon landings, one of the astronauts, Alan Bean, who went to the moon in Apollo 12, retrained as an impressionist painter after he left nasa, because he said at some point NASA are going to send a poet to the moon, and there may be a painter, but they've stopped going to the moon, so they're never going to get round to it. So I've retrained as a retrained as a painter, so there are at least paintings of the moon by someone who went to the moon.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Oh, that's very cool.
Al Murray:
Which is cool. Now I see Zeno in that kind of bracket. He retrains as a novelist. So a novelist went to Arnum and writes a novelist's version of what it was like to be there. So you can read people's accounts, you can read people's respective, but this is a novel about what it was like for the men there with the novelist insight. And it's a tremendous book. Absolutely. And it's really exciting to see it back in
James Holland:
Print. I mean, the other one I'd suggested is a sort of honour Trey by Evelyn War, if you want, get a insight to the Second World War written only just after it, but even in War wrote that. And of course, he's an absolutely amazing novelist, funny and moving, and it's brilliant evocation of those wartime years.
Rhianna Dhillon:
What a lovely spread of recommendations. Thank you so much Al and James. That was delightful.
Speaker 4:
Well, thank you. Thank you.
Rhianna Dhillon:
It's an author extravaganza the Penguin podcast today. So following on from that brilliant chat with Al and James, I've got another penguin author down the line with me, and I think almost all of you listening will have read at least one of his books, if not 20. I was obsessed with them as a kid. And now very excitingly, he's got a new book out for adults, A History of Britain in 10 Enemies. He's the author of an astonishing 340 published books, including the acclaimed horrible history series, which have been adapted for theatre museum exhibitions, and of course a major CBBC series. I am of course, speaking with Terry Deary. Terry, it's great to see you.
Terry Deary:
Hello, lovely to see you again.
Rhianna Dhillon:
So your new book, A History of Britain in 10 Enemies is very much a history book for an adult readership, although I love that you still apologise for swearing in it.
Terry Deary:
Oh, sorry. That's because some of my readers may be of a delicate disposition. You might,
Rhianna Dhillon:
I mean, I'm sure loads of people who are reading this also grew up with reading horrible histories. I am a huge fan. I think I've told you before of your fiction titles. So what made you decide that it was time to write a book just for grownups?
Terry Deary:
Well, I've written a dozen books for grownups in the past, but they've never found a good publisher to promote them in the way this one's being promoted. Why? Well, there are three basic reasons. The first is because so many parents come to me at signings of children's books and say, I grew up reading your books. I love them, and you think, well, you can still love them, but if I address more age appropriate for you. And the second one is there are so many history books coming out now, which the publishers sell as horrible histories for grownups, I think, hang on, I'm horrible histories. Do you mind? I can do that. And the third reason is quite bizarre, really. It's a poem by somebody called Tenon. You might've heard of him, who wrote a poem called ois and all his heroes are coming back from Troy. They're tired and they're old, but he says, maybe before we die we can do one great thing and this is it. This is me thinking I'm knocking on a bit now. So can I move on and do one last great thing or two or threes. So those are reasons quite bizarre, isn't it?
Rhianna Dhillon:
So are you sort of seeing this as your magnus opus then?
Terry Deary:
Oh, what a lovely term. Magnus opus. I didn't know you spoke German, but there you go.
Rhianna Dhillon:
So the book takes quite a unique historical perspective because you're arguing that nations and their leaders are defined by the enemies that they make. So what inspired you to look at Britain's past through the stories of its enemies?
Terry Deary:
This is the most bizarre story of all. It started 70 years ago when I was playing football for the Cubs in Sunderland. And one game, it got to halftime. We were seven little up and I'd scored six, kicked off for the second half. I run up the field, scored my seventh goal, and the referee blew the whistle full time to spare the opposition. And ever after for 50 years, I thought, wow, I was a great footballer when I was a kid. And then it dawned on me, no, I wasn't. I was playing against little seven, eight year olds when I was a nine, 10-year-old, and you're only as good as your opposition. And then I started looking at history of Britain and realised it's the same something like corp, where 5,000 British troops were faced by 20,000 French. He becomes a hero. And the arm mater and World War ii, some of them have been exploited and some of 'em remembered. And what they don't tell you is about the times we went and smashed totally inadequate little cubs, they walked into native tribes and machine gunned them. Nobody mentions that. They only mention what looks heroic. It's sort of like David and Goliath. Everybody wants to be David. Nobody wants to be Goliath, do they?
Yeah. Nobody mentions that David cheated. He used an interpersonal ballistic missile against a hand weapon they make. Nobody would've heard of David if it hadn't been for Goliath. His enemy made him what he was and nations of the same.
Rhianna Dhillon:
So what are you hoping that your readers will get out of both perspectives then? Because obviously it it's a whistle stop tour. Are you hoping they will go away and do extra research of their own?
Terry Deary:
Yeah, and they'll find out things that spark their interest. For example, I was very unaware that one of our greatest enemies in the 17 hundreds was a Dutch. When you think of British enemies, you don't think of the Dutch, but they were had an expanding empire we had, and we ended up going to war with them several times in the 17 hundreds. And the other thing that quite shocked me was that I thought, right, I will write a serious book for adults. And the first reports I got back from the editors and readers was I laughed out loud several times. What? It must be the way I tell them.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I mean, you're right. It is very funny. I think because you do, it just sounds like your voice because you're addressing the reader. You're talking about you and you are saying, you're probably thinking this. And here's a little funny aside with an asterisk. And it feels very much like your personality is there on every single page, which were a historical book is quite rare. So is that always the way that you wrote, did that just come really easily to you from the beginning or did that take time to hone?
Terry Deary:
Well, you are saying that that's why nobody else can write horrible histories for adults because it is my voice humour. Yes. I've always written humorous material for stage, screen and books. I do write the occasional more serious one, but it's very hard to keep the jokes out. Basically, if publishing industry is a circus, I'm a clown. And my big shoes, I just can't get rid of them.
Rhianna Dhillon:
So you nearly just made me spit my coffee out when you said that when you should be drinking coffee, when you're talking to me, how dare you. The Roman Empire is something I wanted to talk to you about because it has weirdly recently been in the headlines with this discovery that men think about the Roman Empire an awful lot more than we realised. But what are your thoughts on the Roman Empire? You say that Calas called the Romans robbers of the world. Again, this is a slightly different perspective.
Terry Deary:
When I went to school about 150 years ago, we were taught the Romans brought civilization to the world. They didn't, I cannot believe that people ever said this or believed this. The Roman society existed on slavery. They expanded and raided other countries and in order to get slaves to make the lives of people in Rome more comfortable, and as for their hobby of killing people in public in front of a 50,000 crowd in arenas like the coliseum murdering them in public, how is that civilised? I mean, the Aztecs would rip out your human beating heart, but they did that because they believed that they were pleasing the gods. But the Romans were doing it for fun. They were cheering and cheering and laughing and scoffing food. And watching somebody tore apart was that, how can they possibly be called civilised? I hate the Romans. Did you know that?
Does this sort of come across? This is something which in horrible histories, I try to reeducate, not educate, but reeducate and say, hang on, look at the truth behind them. No, they weren't civilised. And a very intelligent little 6-year-old boy of an acquaintance of mine went into school and the teacher began this lesson on Rome. The Romans brought civilization to the world. And he said, no, they didn't. And he argued with a teacher. And what happened to that little boy? He was punished because he'd read my book and dared to argue with the teacher. So yay. I'm reeducating people on some aspects of history like the wrongs one.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I mean, you say that people have said that they laugh out loud at your book, which I'm sure they absolutely do. But this book made me gasp out loud a number of times because it's so blood thirsty. Your descriptions are so horrific in some places. Yes.
Terry Deary:
But that too,
Rhianna Dhillon:
I
Terry Deary:
Don't do it for gratuitous pleasure of the reader. I do it in order to make a point about the people, our enemies and how cruel we were, how cruel they were, and how unnecessary it probably is.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Is there a historical figure that you, I think has really kind of been done over by history and you actually have a bit of a soft spot for
Terry Deary:
There are people who've been ignored. And my favourite character is of course, Jack Crawford, who comes from a city now, which was a town man, which is the centre of the universe. It's called Sunland. Have you heard of it?
Rhianna Dhillon:
I have heard of it,
Terry Deary:
Yeah. The fact that I come from there doesn't prejudice me at all. Of course,
Rhianna Dhillon:
I'm sure
Terry Deary:
At the Battle of Camperdown in 1797, the Dutch set off from the Dutch coast to wipe out the British fleet saw their friends. The French under Napoleon could simply go across the channel and invade. And at the battle of Camperdown, Admiral Duncan's ship was flying its colours from the main mast, and they were blown off by the Dutch that meant defeat. So the admiral said, does any man want to go up the mast and mail the colours back on? And Jack Crawford from Sunland Centre of the universe said, I, I'll do it. So he climbed up the mast with the fly. He was shot by a sniper through the chief, but he kept going and mailed the colours back onto the mast after. But the battle of Camperdown was won by the British, and as a result, the French did not invade. In 1797, the war went on. Napoleon was defeated the TGA or his navy was by Nelson. Now Nelson gets a bloody big statue in the middle of London. None of that would've happened if Jack Crawford hadn't nailed the colours back to the must. Why is Jack Crawford forgotten and Nelson, who there's some evidence he was in favour of slavery. They don't pull his statue down. They probably can't get rogue long enough.
Rhianna Dhillon:
That's true. But
Terry Deary:
Jack Crawford's got a little statue 50 years after he died in squalor, he died of cholera and he's generally forgotten.
Rhianna Dhillon:
So is that part of your mission to sort of make sure that these unsung heroes do get the accolades that they deserve? However long after the fact?
Terry Deary:
It's always my mission in horrible histories or in history of Britain in 10 enemies. I'm not a very fair historian. I've got this theory that say the monarchs of England are either cruel or stupid or arrogant, but most of them were all three. And if I can come up with stories which prove my theory that the Mons of Britain have all been stupid, cruel and arrogant, then I will put them in. I'm not very fair, shall we say? Not very fair. And the heroes are boosted up. So I don't mention the fact that Jack Crawford, after he was dismissed from the Navy, was an alcoholic, will forget that, which puts him down. Oh, I just mentioned it. Oh,
Rhianna Dhillon:
I mean, apart from running around and terrorising small children on the football pitch, were you inspired by history when you were a child? Was there a book that really inspired your love and interest in the subject? Or was it a person or how did you find your way to it?
Terry Deary:
You are too young to remember when I grew up, when there weren't any books. I was born in 1946 just after World War ii, not World War, world War ii.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Right. Even I know you're not that old. Even
Terry Deary:
The bookshelves were covered in dusty little books from before the war. A paper was scarce, and so we didn't have access to books till I was about 13 or 14. There were nonfiction books. I'll never forget, my favourite, which was on the dusty shelf in the school classroom was called The Lady Bird Book of British Birds. And so I pinched it from the classroom. I was so fascinated by British birds. I'd sent me Dad, God, God in the garden, there's an eagle. Said what? Where It's like in the book, it's got two wings, two legs, a tail and feathers. I think you'll find that's a spar song.
But boys like nonfiction. The other book I pinched from the school was Enid Blyton's Castle of Adventure, which was okay, but that book convinced me that I would never be a writer because it was all about middle class kids going on holiday with the aunties by the seaside and having Jolly ginger beer and the picnics and running it up against these jolly unpleasant chaps. I thought, I can't write a book like that beyond the book might entertain me, but I, I'll never be a writer. And here I'm 350 published books later, I'll still never be a writer. I keep trying. I keep trying.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I wanted to ask you because growing up I was such a huge fan of the Tudor Chronicles.
Terry Deary:
Obviously a young woman of taste and discernment,
Rhianna Dhillon:
Love them so much. I was in love with Will. Is that something that you'd be interested in returning to for adults, like a historical fiction series?
Terry Deary:
I don't decide. It's the public that decide. I've written a murder mystery, which comes out next summer and it's set in centre of the universe, Sunland in 1973. Okay.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Oh, brilliant.
Terry Deary:
When I was about in my mid twenties. It has all sorts of advantages and I know the place from my memory now when my murder mystery publisher, it's called, actually I'm a Murderer. When they got it, they said, we're going to put this up for murder mystery prizes and then some of the other, hang on, this story is set over 50 years ago so we can put it up for history prizes. And now I really have written a book, which is historical From memory. I would love to write more fiction, but it's what the public wants and what wonderful people like Penguin and so on can sell the reader Is Kim Queen?
Rhianna Dhillon:
Well, as part of your public, I would say absolutely. Please, please do it.
Terry Deary:
Okay. You go out and buy that book, right? Just about the start on the follow up. Actually, I'm a corpse.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Excellent. Actually, Terry, while you are here, would you be able to help us with some listener requests?
Terry Deary:
Go ahead.
Rhianna Dhillon:
That's what I'm here for. Excellent. So somebody's written in to say, I love historical memoirs and biographies and I'm looking for a book about an unsung hero. That's a fascinating read and it can be from any period of history. Do you have any suggestions? And based on what we've been talking about, hopefully this is up your
Terry Deary:
Street. Yeah, I think there are lots of biographies of leaders and kings and queens, but it's the people one step down from them. And I recently came across a book about a 13, 1400, 1300 guy called William Marshall who was a warrior and he's absolutely fascinating and there are also some great stories about him. For example, his son was taken hostage and they said, do what we want or we'll kill your son. And his reply was, that's alright, I've got other sons. If you're looking for a big name, then that's probably it. William Marshall.
Rhianna Dhillon:
William Marshall, thank you. There's another question. What is the best book about a British monarch?
Terry Deary:
Oh, I've written so many. Oops, sorry. I don't know because as I say, I'm so prejudice, I read 'em. But I think Antonio Razer on Mary Queen of Scots because like me, she's prejudiced Mary Queen of Scots Catholic. I'm Tony Fraser Catholic. So you get a different perspective instead of somebody looking at her and saying, actually she was a bit of a witch, more sympathetic view of Mary Queen of Scots. So Antonio Fraser's, Mary, queen of Scots, probably.
Rhianna Dhillon:
That's a fabulous one. Terry, thank you so much for joining us on the Penguin Podcast. Talk about all things history. I've loved this. Thank you did. She's amazed
Terry Deary:
That people actually enjoy my book. I can't wait for it to come out. And very quickly finish off. A little girl wants to listen to one of my audio recordings and said, I listened to the rotten Romans, the car, and it was so horrible. I was sick. And she said, bless her, but I didn't mind. That's so cute. The parents did having to mop up the car on the screw. But there you go. So yes, it's full of horrible facts and it's full apparently of humour, so I can't wait to get people's reactions. Thank you so much for taking the time to interview me.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Thank you so much, Terry. So it is a history of Britain in 10 Enemies Available from all good bookstores, or you can click the link in the show notes to buy your copy online now. Terry Dearie, thank you so much.
Terry Deary:
Thank you.
Rhianna Dhillon:
That is everything for this jam packed episode. Hopefully those reading recommendations will keep you going until next time when I'll be back with more authors and loads more books. Thank you so much to all of you who have messaged Ask Penguin this series. And if you'd like to get a question to us, you can email Penguin podcast@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk. For other episodes and details of all of the books and authors that we've spoken to in this series, go to penguin.co.uk/podcasts. Thank you so much for listening and happy reading.