Give it up for Horrible Histories songwriting. A few examples:
“Can you imagine it? I’m the last Plantagenet”
“You think life was one big antic/My profession was romantic/Hate to be pedantic, but it ain’t” and
A whole song where Shakespeare sings about famous quotes of his that have become common parlance, that ends with him scatting “Dooby dooby dooby/To be or not to be?”
Efficiently establishing that neither side of the English Civil War was ‘the good guys’ with lines like “Cavaliers, three cheers, your superiors” (snooty elitists) and “Roundheads, sound heads, witches should be drowned-heads” (zealous fundamentalists).
The Luddites get a heavy rock song, because they rage against the machine. And they are correctly characterised as skilled weavers who are justifiably angry about losing their livelihoods to the Industrial Revolution, rather than just hating progress.
The Romantic poets song incorporates lines of their actual poetry like “Beauty is truth, and truth is beauty”. It also explains their poetic philosophy as not necessarily about romantic love, but valuing emotion, imagination and reflection on powerful forces like nature over realism and logic. “Life is short and cruel and frantic/Nature lives on—that’s so romantic”
“British Things” is all about how quintessential parts of British life and culture (tea, sugar, cotton) are grown in other countries, and at this point in history were obtained through slavery, oppression and bloodshed. Queen Victoria is told “Your empire’s built on fighting wars/That’s why your income’s swollen/Your British things are from abroad/And most are, frankly, stolen”.
Mary Seacole song highlighting that she was a self-made woman who founded the British Hotel on her own, and unlike Florence Nightingale she treated soldiers in the heat of battle
Song about the history of the Olympic Games that honours Jesse Owens (“It made Herr Hitler made, ha, it made him fürer-ious!”)
Spotlighting Douglas Bader in the RAF song and mentioning that many of the Few were foreign. Also just. The RAF as a boyband. “Take that, Hitler!”
“Food, Glorious Food” parody about child labour in industrial Victorian Britain and how awful those kids had it, titled “Work, Terrible Work”. No positive adjectives until the end—“Guess what we are dreaming? School! Glorious school! Wonderful school, marvellous school!” For as scathing and satirical as the show and especially the books could be about modern education and teachers, it’s still abundantly clear that learning is something to be sought, enjoyed and encouraged.
The Monarchs Song, which names every single English monarch from William the Conqueror to Elizabeth II.
My name is CHARLES THE SECOND
Does the franchise simplify things? Yes. Does it use a ‘great man’ approach to history? Yes. But on top of usually being accurate, even to very specific details, it also stokes a genuine curiosity about history and culture with a sense of critical thinking. It continually emphasises ideas like ‘people in power, and the systems they run, can be bad/untrustworthy/foolish/unqualified’ and ‘a lot of what you hear may not be the full truth, if it’s true at all; people lie or get things wrong all the time’ and ‘conflicts can be much more complicated than good vs evil, with both sides having good and bad traits or even both being really terrible’. Even the more lionised figures are still humanised, not blindly glorified.
And the songs are BANGERS. I LOVED THE PEOPLE AND THE PEOPLE LOVED ME
