William Terence Deary (born 3 January 1946)[1] is a British children's author of 351 books, selling over 38 million copies in over 45 languages, best known as the writer of the Horrible Histories series.

The Horrible Histories live action comedy sketch show of the same name has been shown on CBBC since 2009.

[citation needed] Deary received an Honorary Doctorate of Education from the University of Sunderland in 2000.

[7] It was announced in 2024 that Constable had won the rights to Deary's first foray into crime fiction, Actually, I'm a Murderer following a four-way auction.

[11] Deary is an outspoken critic of schools, which he believes serve no function above keeping children off the street.

They should have been teaching me the life skills I was going to need, such as building relationships, parenting and managing money.

"[13] Deary has also called to "ban Horrible Histories from schools", because "classrooms take all the fun out of his stories".

He argued: "we've got this idea that we've got an entitlement to read books for free, at the expense of authors, publishers and council tax payers... We don't expect to go to a food library to be fed.