Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Horrible Histories trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Horrible Histories started as a pair of children's books in 1993 and grew into one of the UK's best-loved franchises: a live-action sketch show that adults watched as keenly as their kids, music videos that parody everything from rap to rockabilly, a Prom in a famous London venue, two cinema releases, a game show, a cartoon and a theatre production that became the longest-running children's show in the West End. These 50 questions stay with the franchise itself rather than the history it teaches. They cover the author and his illustrator, the seven-strong troupe of the sketch show and the characters that became their signatures, the rat who hosts it, the parodies behind the best-known numbers, the 2015 relaunch, the 2019 film and the sitcoms the cast made afterwards. Most are pitched for anyone who grew up with the show or watched it with their children; a handful at the end are for completists. Play on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it for a pub quiz, a classroom or a family night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Horrible Histories author set one condition for the 2009 sketch show: it had to be 'horrible, funny and' what?
True
True was the non-negotiable part, and the producers found that sticking closely to the historical record made the jokes easier to find.
Q 02Which former actor and drama teacher wrote the Horrible Histories books, starting with two titles in 1993?
Terry Deary
Terry Deary has written 351 books that have sold more than 38 million copies in over 45 languages, and he retired from children's books in 2011.
Q 03Lion Television's live-action Horrible Histories, hosted by a rat puppet, launched in 2009 on which channel?
CBBC
CBBC ran five series of thirteen half-hour episodes between 2009 and 2014, and still repeats the show daily.
Q 04What is the name of the black rat puppet who links Horrible Histories sketches, explaining which facts are real?
Rattus Rattus
Rattus Rattus sometimes holds up the show's pop-up signs himself mid-sketch, and he went on to co-host the spin-off game show Gory Games.
Q 05Which two titles launched the Horrible Histories books in 1993, one on a dynasty and one on an ancient people?
Terrible Tudors and Awful Egyptians
Terrible Tudors and Awful Egyptians set the alliterative pattern, and the last book in the main series was announced for 2013, two decades on.
Q 06In the Horrible Histories sketch show, which foodstuff usually stood in for excrement in the gross-out scenes?
Melted chocolate
Melted chocolate bars did the dirty work while soup stood in for vomit, a prop trick the crew used across five series of bodily-function jokes.
Q 07When Horrible Histories was recut for adult BBC One viewers in 2011, who replaced the rat puppet as host?
Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry fronted a six-part 'best of' from the first two series, a move History Today's editor called 'frightening' for an adult audience.
Q 08Bill, the 2015 film from the Horrible Histories troupe, imagines whose 'lost years' as a hopeless lute player?
Shakespeare
Shakespeare's rise from Stratford to London is a blank for scholars, so the six actors filled it with 40 shared roles and a plot to blow up Elizabeth I.
Q 09In the Horrible Histories film Rotten Romans, schemer Atti is banished to a cold, wet province for upsetting whom?
Nero
Nero packs Atti off to the edge of the empire, where he is captured by a Celt called Orla and ends up facing her tribe at the Battle of Watling Street.
Q 10Which prize, won twice by Horrible Histories, had never before gone to a children's programme?
British Comedy Award
The British Comedy Award wins were followed by four successive children's BAFTAs, and Channel 5 later ranked the show eighth among all British children's series.
Q 11Which Australian cartoonist's illustrations make every Horrible Histories book and spin-off instantly recognisable?
Martin Brown
Martin Brown's drawings became the basis for the TV show's animated sketches and even for a 2013 Battle Arena range of action figures.
Q 12The Horrible Histories author, a butcher's son who helped in the shop from age three, was born in which city?
Sunderland
Sunderland later gave him an honorary doctorate in 2000, and he still supports the city's football club from his home in County Durham.
Q 13The Horrible Histories author wants his own books banned from where, saying they 'take all the fun out' of his stories?
Schools
Q 21Who plays the Shouty Man, the Horrible Histories pitchman who hawks historical products like an infomercial host?
Jim Howick
Jim Howick won a Children's BAFTA in 2010 for the show's second series, and later taught science as Mr Hendricks in Sex Education.
Q 22Which Horrible Histories regular, an Oxford graduate in Russian and French, made Henry VIII his signature role?
Ben Willbond
Ben Willbond had won the Perrier Best Newcomer prize in 1999 as half of the duo Ben & Arn, and later played the Captain in Ghosts.
Q 23Whose Charles II, the 'King of Bling', became a Horrible Histories signature before he co-created The Wrong Mans?
Mathew Baynton
Schools, he argues, are a Victorian idea for keeping children off the street, and classrooms 'take all the fun out of his stories'.
Q 14The Horrible Histories author said in 2013 that which institutions had 'had their day', paying him far too little?
Libraries
Libraries had just made him the UK's tenth most-borrowed author in 2012, yet he wanted £180,000 a book from lending rather than £6,000.
Q 15Which publisher of the Horrible Histories books called the franchise one of its 'crown jewels' in 2013?
Scholastic
Scholastic's UK publishing director said the series had covered 'every possible era that has a commercial outcome' and was moving into box sets and annuals.
Q 16Which theatre troupe stages Horrible Histories around the world under licence, using 3D 'Bogglevision' effects?
Birmingham Stage Company
Birmingham Stage Company was founded by actor-manager Neal Foster in 1992 and has taken the shows as far as Delhi, Sydney and Dubai.
Q 17Which four-part Horrible Histories show became the longest-running children's production in West End history?
Barmy Britain
Barmy Britain first opened in 2012, from a producer whose repertoire runs from Roald Dahl to David Walliams.
Q 18Which Horrible Histories star plays Death, the skeletal, platinum-blond host of 'Stupid Deaths'?
Simon Farnaby
Simon Farnaby went on to co-write Paddington 2 and Wonka with Paul King, and returned as Death when the show was relaunched in 2015.
Q 19Which Horrible Histories writer ended up in the cast because nobody else could deliver his creation Bob Hale?
Laurence Rickard
Laurence Rickard's rambling HHTV News monologues proved impossible to hand to anyone else, and he later played Robin the caveman in Ghosts.
Q 20Bob Hale, the HHTV News reporter whose reports spiral off a studio map, parodies which election-night presenter?
Peter Snow
Peter Snow's breathless studio style was the model, and a special Bob Hale Report was even made for the BBC's 2012 Sport Relief night.
Mathew Baynton, who trained in clowning in Paris, went on to win Taskmaster's nineteenth series in 2025 and its Champion of Champions.
Q 24Which RADA graduate, the only woman in the core Horrible Histories troupe, played Elizabeth I and Cleopatra?
Martha Howe-Douglas
Martha Howe-Douglas had been a Doctors soap receptionist before the show, and she later led Yonderland as suburban mum Debbie Maddox.
Q 25'Born 2 Rule', the first-series Horrible Histories hit that set the music-video template, cast four kings as what?
A boyband
A boyband of four kings proved so popular that from series two every song was built as a self-contained parody of a modern genre.
Q 26'Born 2 Rule' blamed the wrong king for dying 'on the loo'; at the 2011 Horrible Histories Prom it went to whom?
George II
George II really did collapse and die beside his close stool in 1760; the 2009 video had pinned the death on George I, and the Prom reprise put it right.
Q 27Horrible Histories' 'The Monarchs' Song', listing every ruler since 1066, copies the cumulative style of which duo?
Chas & Dave
Chas & Dave's knees-up format was chosen deliberately to challenge young viewers who had already memorised earlier numbers word for word.
Q 28The Horrible Histories song 'Ra Ra Cleopatra', reprised at the 2011 Prom, parodies which pop star?
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga's sound, a Guardian critic felt, needed no orchestra, calling the Prom's added strings 'unnecessary, even intrusive'.
Q 29Horrible Histories' series-two song 'Charles II: King of Bling' is a swaggering pastiche of which rapper?
Eminem
Eminem was the model for the Charles II number, one of the pieces the cast reprised with a full orchestra at the 2011 Prom.
Q 30Horrible Histories' Charles Dickens video, with comedian Al Murray on drums, was styled on which Manchester band?
The Smiths
The Smiths pastiche was one of several fifth-series roles for the Pub Landlord comedian, who joined a guest list that included Alexei Sayle and David Baddiel.