One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ... part 146 ….. The Beano … Gandalf …. and Horrible Histories ….

 The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since. *

Beano album, 1989

When you live in a house for 47 years which has been home to all your kids you collect a lot of comics, books, and ephemera which never get thrown away.

Many will recognise that simple observation that kids leave, come back, leave again, but much of their childhood stuff stays at home.

Now while some parents are ruthless in offering up ultimatums for this stuff to be taken away or binned, I am the softy and heaps of their childhood still sit neatly boxed up in our cellar.

These include the entire collection of Beano and Dandy comics and annuals from roughly 1989 , a vast army of figures from the Lord of the Rings and a fair few books from the Horrible Histories series.

All of which is an introduction to this being thirty years since the publication of the first Horrible Histories book.

For my generation there is of course a link back to 1066 and All That, which I fell across sometime in the 1960s and which set me on my own path of loving history but always looking to challenge the orthodox interpretations of past events by historians and teachers with their own agendas.

I can’t remember the last time I picked up my battered copy of the book or even if it has survived the passage of five decades. 

Equally I must confess I had no idea that Horrible Histories was 30 this year, until I opened my copy of the Sunday Times which carried an interview with Terry Dear who wrote the books.

The Sunday Times, April, 9th, 2023

Its an interesting article offers up some insights into why Mr. Dear started the series, his thoughts on the teaching of history and touches on that issue of revisiting and rewriting a book in the face of cultural changes.

Which of course leads into the discussions around the revisions undertaken on the works of Ronald Dahl. Now some of these do look a bit odd even given our more enlightened and sensitive understanding of how some words can today be hurtful and reinforce stereo types. 

But then some would argue that a book, a play or a painting reflect the period in which they were produced and so what may be offensive is still a key to how the world was seen by people in the past, which is historically useful.

And that in turn morphs into the huge debate on what to do with the statues and indeed the memories of those who were engaged in The Salve Trade and other activities we now view as abhorrent.

The argument for totally obliterating them from history or at the very least tearing them down has its supporters. As does the move to change the names of colleges, charities and organizations linked to men and women, but mainly men who profited from slavery.  Afterall we would not countenance a statue to Adolf Hitler being erected by a group of far right supports in this country.

But rather than destroying these reminders of our colonial past, perhaps a more historical move would be to place them in museums with a detailed explanation of their role in events like the Slave Trade, thereby taking away what looks to be our collective approval and instead seeks to explore our past in a more positive way.

It’s a line I would take but comes unstuck when I look and read again the works of Mr. Dahl whose macabre humour and plot twists and turns have delighted children and adults alike.

And my problem with him is that by the admission of his own family he was antisemitic, and I find that an uncomfortable thing to deal with when reading his work.

In turn it leads to the whole question of how we value the work of the “greats” in literature like the iffy lines that drip from say Shakespeare’s Othello, and The Merchant of Venice or the portrayal of Fagin in Oliver Twist.

Gandalf, Lord of the Rings figure, 2001

But as Mr. Deary points out he and countless others do revisit and rewrite their books if only to replace an anachronistic word with a new one.

All of which brings me back to the Beano and those two comic characters Spotty and Fatty who after 67 years have been renamed Scotty and Freddy. 

They are changes which are perhaps long overdue.

Although I know I am on to a loser with Lord of the Rings, for as much as I love the trilogy and have since I first discovered it back in 1967 its hierarchical back plot of Kings and Lords have bore me silly.

But I concede three volumes devoted to how a truly libertarian Hobbit collective defeated the all powerful Sauron and his army of evil Orks, giant spiders and primeval monsters may not have the same appeal.

Leaving me just to accept that the hundreds of Beano’s, along with the collection of Middle Earth figures and Mr. Dreary’s out put of Horrible Histories will remain in the cellar as a testimony to what our kids liked.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Beano Album, 1989, Gandalf, 2001, 30 Years of Being Horrible, Culture, The Sunday Times, April 9th, 2003

*The Story of a House, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

**”1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates”  is a humourous reworking of the history of England. It was written by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman and illustrated by John Reynolds, it first appeared serially in Punch magazine, and was published in book form by Methuen & Co. Ltd. in 1930.