Truth or Busted: The Fact or Fiction Behind History

Kay Barnham was born in Barrow-in-Furness, grew up in Carlisle, went to college in Brighton, and lived in Hove for a while, before sailing for Kinsale, Co Cork, popping back to Hove and then moving to the New Forest with her husband and daughter. And never at any point has she lived more than ten miles from the sea. She began working in children`s publishing in 1992. She was an editor first of all, working on illustrated non-fiction and learning fun facts like how long it would take to walk to the moon - nine years - and how to spell palaeontology. Next, she commissioned fiction titles, editing picture books, storybooks and novels. And then she got the chance to write her own books, which she thinks is quite the best job ever. Except possibly being a chocolatier. She writes non-fiction as Kay Barnham. Her specialist subjects include ice-skating, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, lightning, fairies, Roald Dahl, Sir Isaac Newton, Christmas, dolphins, Florence Nightingale and very bad cracker jokes. And chocolate.She also writes fiction as Kay Woodward, including the Skate School series for Usborne and the novels Jane Airhead and Wuthering Hearts for Andersen Press. Altogether, she`s written about a hundred books. Her favourite colour is navy blue. Her favourite chocolate is 85% cocoa solids.

• 1: Walter Rayleigh introduced the potato and tobacco to Europe2: Thomas Crapper invented the flushing toilet3: Elizabeth I had black teeth4: Napoleon was really short5: Vlad the Impaler was so called because he stuck his victims on spikes6: Julius Caesar was born by caesarian section7: In the Middle Ages everyone thought the world was flat8: Medieval people washed their clothes in wee!