Horrible Histories Trivia
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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. He'd had a bad experience with an earlier cartoon of his books, and once writing began the sketch show's makers found that truth turned out to be funnier than fiction.
Q 02Which former actor and drama teacher wrote the Horrible Histories books?
Terry Deary
Terry Deary was asked for a history joke book, with a few facts supplied to go with the gags. He found the facts more interesting and delivered 'a fact book with jokes' instead.
Q 03Lion Television's live-action Horrible Histories, hosted by a rat puppet, launched in 2009 on which channel?
CBBC
CBBC got a sketch show made by writers from adult comedy, whose benchmarks were Blackadder and Monty Python and the Holy Grail rather than other children's programmes.
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?
Terrible Tudors and Awesome Egyptians
Terrible Tudors and Awesome Egyptians led the way, though only the first has the alliterative kind of title most of the series uses. Awful Egyptians is a different, later book.
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' drawn from the first two series, taking mainstream a children's show that had long been a guilty pleasure for parents.
Q 08Bill, the 2015 film from the Horrible Histories troupe, imagines young Shakespeare as a hopeless player of which instrument?
Lute
Lute. Ditched by his band, Bill heads for London to make his name as a playwright and is caught up in a plot to blow up Queen Elizabeth.
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 for Best Sketch Show went to the children's series ahead of adult nominees including Harry & Paul, and it won the prize again a year later.
Q 11Which Australian cartoonist drew the illustrations for the original Horrible Histories books?
Martin Brown
Martin Brown grew up in Melbourne, doodling cartoons, and reached London on his travels with no plan to stay. He settled, and has drawn the series since its first books.
Q 12The Horrible Histories author grew up helping in his father's shop in Sunderland, which was what kind of shop?
A butcher's
A butcher's, in a poor part of the city. He has said that growing up around it showed him what poverty was and gave him 'a realistic outlook on life'.
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 for the show in 2010. He says a grandfather and granddaughter once waited outside a restaurant toilet to ask for his autograph.
Q 22Which Horrible Histories regular, later the Captain in Ghosts, made Henry VIII his signature role?
Ben Willbond
Ben Willbond later co-wrote the troupe's film Bill and took the villain's part himself: Philip II of Spain, who arrives in England planning to kill Elizabeth I.
Q 23Whose Charles II, the 'King of Bling', became a Horrible Histories signature before he co-created The Wrong Mans?
Mathew Baynton
Schools, he says, were 'a Victorian idea to get kids off the street'. At his own there were 52 children in the class, and all he learned was how to pass an exam.
Q 14The Horrible Histories author said in 2013 that which institutions had 'had their day', paying him far too little?
Libraries
Libraries lent his books more than 500,000 times in a year, but the lending scheme capped his payment at £6,600. At 30p a sale, he said, he should have been getting £180,000.
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 company turns Horrible Histories into live shows under licence, using 3D 'Bogglevision' effects?
Birmingham Stage Company
Birmingham Stage Company was founded by actor-manager Neal Foster. In its Vile Victorians the effect arrives after the interval, when the animated backdrop behind the actors turns 3D.
Q 17Which Horrible Histories stage show became the longest-running children's production in West End history?
Barmy Britain
Barmy Britain opened in the West End in 2012 with a cast of just two, and kept returning in new editions, reaching a Part Five for its tenth anniversary.
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 was hired purely as a writer. By 2011 he was performing a Bob Hale report live at the Royal Albert Hall, as part of the show's BBC Prom.
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 wrote The Wrong Mans with James Corden, a friend from his time in Gavin & Stacey, and went on to win Taskmaster in 2025.
Q 24Which RADA graduate, the only woman in the core Horrible Histories troupe, played Elizabeth I and Cleopatra?
Martha Howe-Douglas
Martha Howe-Douglas went from playing a receptionist in the daytime soap Doctors to playing the show's queens, and 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 26Which of the four Georges in Horrible Histories' 'Born 2 Rule' really did die on the toilet, in 1760?
George II
George II rose at six on 25 October 1760 and went to his closet alone. His valet heard a crash, ran in and found the king on the floor.
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's style was borrowed for a video shot at Hampton Court, where the producer says only documentaries are usually allowed. Charles II and his bewigged cronies danced on the tables.
Q 30Horrible Histories' Charles Dickens music video was styled on which Manchester band?
The Smiths
The Smiths meant so much to the actor playing Dickens that he said he'd be 'distraught' if anyone else got the part. The song welds This Charming Man to Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now.