I Was There series Edited by John D Clare. Italian Renaissance #163;8.99.1 898304 00 9 First World War #163;8.99. 898304 10 6 Investigation Packs Ancient Greece #163;15.99 1 898304 12 2. Vikings #163;15.99. 1 898304 22 X

Sean Lang enjoys eye-witness accounts that offer more than a glimpse. When is a source not a source? When it’s two lines torn out of context and plonked in the middle of a national curriculum textbook. I’ve never been convinced by the arguments against giving children longer chunks of historical text to deal with: English teachers don’t baulk at giving them whole books to read. So, a warm welcome to the new History Eyewitness series, which places a selection of vivid first-hand historical accounts into children’s hands in their entirety.

The texts have been carefully edited for children by June Shuter, with notes and glossaries, though without losing any of their excitement, or period flavour.

And what flavour! Edmund Ludlow is forced to surrender Wardour Castle to the royalists, signs Charles I’s death warrant (that’ll teach them to exchange important prisoners), and ends up in exile in Switzerland, worrying about royalist hit squads. Helen Williams lived in even greater fear as an Englishwoman in Paris at the height of the Revolution, though when she did finally leave France she was amazed at how easy she found it. The story of a later Englishwoman in enemy territory, Christabel Bielenberg, is well known from her autobiography, The Past is Myself, but it loses nothing of its power in this retelling for children, and the interview with the Gestapo officer Lange is as tense as ever. Even so, I still award a special prize for pluck to the California-bound trekker Sarah Royce, for the enterprise and nerve she showed in dealing with the sort of peril of the American West that seldom makes it into the films - or even the books - a large tarantula.

The trouble with taking one account as a way into a period is not so much the author’s viewpoint (Helen Williams on Robespierre: “When the foul fiend had finished his mocking speech” and Edmund Ludlow on Cromwell: “throwing lives away abroad and liberties at home” make their views fairly clear) but rather that they only cover those aspects that the authors happened to witness. This inevitably leaves some hefty gaps, but the books compensate with some revealing details not readily available elsewhere. Christabel Bielenberg found the German countryside a relief after the tensions of Berlin, but for Helen Williams the countryside outside Paris was too full of government agents to be safe even for walks. Edmund Ludlow tells of some of the ghastly cruelty behind the dash and colour of the Civil War; Sarah Royce found cholera rather than Indians the major hazard of crossing the plains.

The accounts have been well edited, though there is an unusually high number of typographical errors, including consistent misspelling of the name of the Hitler bomb plotter, Count von Stauffenberg, and some historical slips too. Neither the Sudetenland nor Czechoslovakia had ever belonged to Germany before 1938, and the French Revolutionary Government’s price fixing did not help solve the bread supply; it led to spiralling inflation and even worse shortages. Don’t be put off, though: these books are too good to be confined to a copy or two in the library.

John D Clare’s I Was There series carries glowing tributes from teachers and an American schoolbook award, and all I can do is add to them. These books are stunningly good. They are based on a series of the most realistic and convincing photographed reconstructions you are ever likely to see. Not only are the settings and the props just right, but even the faces fit.

These are not just picture books, mind. The text is not only very well written, but thought-provoking, challenging many preconceptions (and even challenging its own challenges in the “How Do We Know?” section at the end). It might be expected that some of the juicier Borgia stories should take a knock, but Russian success in the First World War at long last gets its due, and British generalship gets a much fairer hearing than it has done for - er - donkeys’ years. The Investigation Packs have photocards with sources, full teachers’ notes, suggestions for lessons and photocopiable worksheets. I don’t know why they didn’t just give the author the history curriculum to write in the first place. Think of the trouble it would have saved.