Roman Aromas ¦ Tudor Odours ¦ Victorian Vapours

A researcher on the history of disease, Dobson points out that the smell of the past is now forgotten. These books seek to remedy this - each title contains five Scratch 'n' Sniff panels with smells that include the rotting heads of Celts' enemies, sweaty Henry VIII in bed, and a multiple privy full of Victorian children. This novelty factor will ensure the series' initial success with young readers, though how authentic the smells are is open to question. After a while 'sewage in the Thames' smelt much like 'fumes in a cotton factory' to me.

The books, humorously illustrated in Asterix style, are littered with fascinating historical facts. Children will love learning that the Romans, not hot on personal hygiene, washed their laundry in tubs of urine and that Elizabeth I's favourite hair gel was made of apples and puppy fat. If you want to find out what Tudor clapperdudgeons or Roman vomitoria were (or smelled like!) these are the books are you. The plethora of puns in the prose and the occasional awful poem are perhaps the only mild irritants to get up one's nose in an otherwise revoltingly refreshing series.