FAKE HISTORY

'Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World', this entertaining book looks at how so much of what we have always believed to be true is simply wrong. The Aztecs were not slaughtered by the Spanish Conquistadors. Churchill was no man of the people. Napoleon did not have a complex. Lincoln did not believe all men were created equal. From the myths of World War Two to the adventures of Columbus, and from the self-serving legends of 'great men' to the origins of curry, the book looks at how we deliberately misremember the past, remembering that ancient people thought that the Earth was flat and that if Napoleon had won we would all be speaking French. Curry comes from India? The Royal family is German? Hitler was a failed artist? Genghis Khan was a pitiless barbarian? Were the good old days really that good? Otto English revises the grand narratives spun by populists and the media to reclaim the truth from those who wrote fake history. A fabulous revision, 342pp in paperback.