HAVING been adapted for television from Terry Deary’s best-selling books, Horrible Histories mania has swept the nation, with the hugely successful television series scooping three BAFTAS and a prestigious 2011 British Comedy Award for Best Sketch Show.

Following the sell-out success of last year’s Ruthless Romans and Awful Egyptians, the Birmingham Stage Company return to Lighthouse, Poole’s Centre for the Arts from November 20-25 with Vile Victorians and Terrible Tudors, two separate live stage shows based on the original books.

Both shows use actors and amazing Bogglevision 3D effects, helping the audience to feel what it was like to live in the sixteenth century ruled by all those hideous Henries and the evil Elizabeth I, or in the nineteenth century strug-gling to survive the misery of the mines and those really rotten railways.

In Terrible Tudors you will hear the legends about the torturing Tudors.

Find out the fate of Henry’s headless wives and his punch up with the Pope. Survive the Spanish Armada as it sails right into the audience.

In Vile Victorians you will find out what exactly a baby farmer did. Can you survive the filth of the factories, the slums and the sewers – and prepare for the Charge of the Light Brigade.

These two shows are adapted from Terry Deary’s best-selling books which are hugely popular both on the page and on television – the BBC TV series has this year won both the British Comedy Award for best TV Sketch show and the RTS Best Children’s TV programme.

Terry Deary is the world’s best selling non-fiction author for children and one of the most popular children’s authors in the country. He has written around 200 books, which have been translated into 40 different languages from China to Brazil.

His Terrible Tudors book was voted best ‘Best Book of Knowledge of All Time’ by BBC TV Blue Peter viewers.

Martin Brown, who lives in Dorset, is best known for his illustrations of the best-selling Horrible Histories series. Martin is from Australia, growing up in Melbourne, but now lives with his wife Sally and their two daughters near Wimborne.

Martin has a huge soft-spot for Terrible Tudors, explaining, “It is the first one we did and it’s where we set up the ideas that would bring us to where we are now.”

View the Vile Victorians at Lighthouse in Poole on November 21 at 7pm, November 22 and 24 at 10.30am and on November 25 at 2.30pm.

The Terrible Tudors take to the stage on at 7pm on November 20, 22, 23 and 24, at 10.30am on November 21, 24 and 25 and at 2.30pm on November 24.