Horrible Histories are automatic 4s. Love them! ( )

A fun read, as this series unfailingly provides, with of course the usual corny but worthy illustrations. Not the best place to discover the broad sweep of an era (natch) but some HH books do give a better flavour than this one, a bit dated itself already (from 1996, before that century’s end), and overly saddled at times with heart-rending testimonies of social deprivation. Find out just how painful the force-feeding of suffragettes was. But it’s all interesting, some of it surprising, and in picking out the quirky, piquant, and funny details, gives plenty of airtime to entertaining oddities and tabloid fodder celebs – step forward once more Lord Lucan and the Rector of Stiffkey... ( )