Fake Heroes: Ten False Icons and How they Altered the Course of History

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for history geeks like myself this book makes for a very interesting read as i learned a lot of interesting facts reading this book. for anyone who isn’t head over heals in love with history however this book doesn’t fully do what it says on the tin and you’d be forgiven for getting bored of the endless tangents. Having exposed some of the greatest lies ever told in Fake History, journalist Otto English turns his attention to some of history's biggest (and most beloved) figures. In the end, it felt like ranting of a disgruntled old-man by Otto English (Andrew Scott), expunging history while evolving into banality.

He shows how our present continues to be manipulated by the fabrications of the past. By the end the reader realises that how so much of what we take to be historical fact is, in fact, fiction. I felt that this book didn’t quite meet my expectations, but I still got much out of it. To that extent I will give the sequel “Fake Heroes” a go. Not in the least that, to my regret, I was once a Che Guevara fanboy. Much has changed since then.Now, to the dogs: Scott took dogs on the Discovery having taken Nansen's advice, and their diet of fish was also recommended by Nansen (not Scott). According to the late great Wally Herbert, it takes a person around two years to become competent at running dogs, Scott had no chance of managing this, whereas the Norwegians would have been running dog teams for years, due to, y'know, living in the Arctic. Argument Honestly held opinions and provocative argument based on current events or our recent reports. I do however have issues with the structure of the book. I found the chapters somewhat misleading in their titles. Each seem set up to discuss a certain historical myth, and yet only a small fraction of those chapters actually discuss what is stated that they are there for. I am aware that the author doesn’t owe me anything and my annoyance with this may be down to my Autism. But my experience in debating taught me the value of getting to the point. But in fairness some of the stories and arguments laid down by the author in those chapters were entertaining and informative. His discussion about food and language was absolutely fascinating and taught me a lot.

This is a mixed bag that deconstructs "great lies" of history and attempts, with varying degrees of success, to find parallels with the current political reality. The brilliant chapters on the hyper-mythologised version of Winston Churchill and weaponising of WWI/WWII memory in modern Britain will resonate with any Brit who has had the misfortune to question Churchill's legacy or, heaven forbid, neglected to wear a paper flower. I even liked the chapter on the dubious origins of "curry."

That said, despite the moments of personal bias, I felt it worked well overall - especially since the subject itself encourages readers to do their own thinking and their own research to counteract it. There is a lot of value in Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World, and the chapters on family stories and the ultimate conclusion of the book were where it really shone. English cunningly sets the whole book up to showcase the bias that each of us holds. Is there really a difference between the giant statue of a golden dog unveiled in Turkmenistan, and Britain's own statue of Petra, the Blue Peter dog in Manchester? What we perceive as foolish and grandiose in the context of other countries somehow become accepted and normalised in our own. This was a lesson sorely needed, and one that English spends his entire book setting up. From an audiobook perspective, I didn't find Otto English's narration particularly engaging. And, as a bilingual German speaker I found his butchering of German pronunciation particularly hard to stomach. Hearing him struggle to pronounce German, French, Nahuatl, and other languages was hard on the ears and I do wish a bit more time and effort had been put into learning the correct pronunciations out of respect to the cultural heritages that those languages represent. This book dismantles the lazy and pernicious tropes of the past as Otto English sets out to redress the balance and reclaim truth from those who seek to pervert it.

According to English, anything Churchill did was mainly for the purposes of self-promotion. When Churchill achieved anything good, it apparently can be attributed to the influence of his wife. English gives as an example of this the social reforms Churchill introduced while at the Board of Trade. However, Churchill stated his support of social reform as early as 1899, five years before he even met Clementine. While campaigning in his first ever election, Churchill said: The reason the Norwegians were (and still are) so good at polar travel is because it's where they live, they do it all the time, they learn to ski before they can walk. Nansen is a towering figure in Norway, and rightfully so (just don't Google his nudes). Amundsen will always be a polar hero, but he is not so highly regarded due to falling in with the likes of Mussolini and his big interest in The Fash during his later years. He has written extensively for Politico [3] and Byline Times, [4] and in 2021 published a non-fiction book, Fake History. [5] [6] Fake History looks at "the 10 biggest lies from history and... at the people who propagated them", [7] including the idea that the British royal family are German, or that Adolf Hitler was a failed artist. [8]Let's get the problems out of the way first: this is a really inadequately edited book. There are numerous typos and other errors scattered throughout it, which no publishing house worth its salt should have let through. The writing is uneven at times and seems almost as if it was rushed, while the narrative is also fascinating in places. The overall premise of the book, however, is difficult to argue with, that "History, much like modern life, is in short full of bullies, self-promoting charlatans, bigots, bastards, and liars." Another way of putting it is that "the person who shouts the loudest gets all the acclaim," which is mentioned by way of explaining why Thomas Edison is widely regarded as the inventor of the light bulb, when it's not really that simple. This is a well-researched and excellently written book on how supposed facts from history and our world are untrue and why humans are so keen to believe them. The desire to buy into enormous lies feeds our brain through its desire to belong. Through many examples over hundreds of years, Otto English (or Andrew Scott, his real name) convinces through asking the questions that he reminds us of at the end of the book: