There’s something very wrong with children’s history books

The first editor I worked for was Charles Moore and, like many of his old and ageing former staff, I still think of him as the boss. We’re like sleeper agents, the remaining skeleton crew of the old Daily Telegraph, ready to rise up at any moment and defend the right to hunt with hounds. I’m programmed to obey, so when Lord Moore recommended, in this magazine a few years ago, a series of out-of-print Ladybird history books for children written by a man called Lawrence du Garde Peach, I instantly bought the lot for my son: L. du Garde Peach on Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Kings Alfred, Richard and Henry VIII.

Now I owe Lord Moore more than ever. Without L. du G. Peach and his Adventure from History series acting as guide and comparison, I might have begun to think modern children’s history books were normal, that it was necessary for the past to be not just dumbed down, but entirely infantilised. 

The easiest way to explain how dramatically children’s non-fiction, especially history, has changed is to compare the illustrations. Over the past 70 years every character in children’s non-fiction has been subject to a form of head inflation. Quite literally, their craniums have been expanding decade by decade until they’ve all taken on the proportions of six-year-olds. From Ramses II through to Queen Victoria, in books even for teenagers, the wisest, fiercest humans are portrayed as giant babies. And because they look like infants, they behave like infants.

In Meet the Ancient Greeks by James Davies (a bestseller), Alexander the Great sticks Post-it notes on the countries he’s captured. Gotcha! ‘Hydra Schnydra!’ says Heracles as he hacks away at the Hydra. In Davies’s Meet the Romans, one gladiator locked in mortal combat with another says: ‘Nice net… I’m really scared!’ His opponent replies: ‘At least I’m not wearing a fish on my head!’ ‘Phwoar,’ says bobble-headed Horus to Hathor, the Egyptian Goddess of love in Meet the Ancient Egyptians.