BOOKS As everybody knows...
Lucy R Fisher enjoys two guides to doubting and deconstructing those “facts” that have become established in our collective knowledge
Fake History
From Mozart’s Murder to Cleopatra’s Asp
Graeme Donald
Michael O’Mara 2021
Pb, 256pp, £7.99, ISBN 9781789293623
Fake History
Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World
Otto English
Wellbeck 2021
Hb, 320pp, £16.99, ISBN 9781787396395
You wait all day for a sceptical history – and then two come along with the same title. There is some crossover (our ancestors knew the Earth was round), but perspectives differ. Otto English debunks “history that will make children proud to be British”, while Graeme Donald ranges over time and space, taking in Joan of Arc, Herodotus, the Easter Island statues and a long list of “what you know that ain’t so”.
Donald’s reliably fact-checked material is sorted under headings: Smoke and Mirrors (legendary lives); Voyages of Discovery (that’s “discovery by white men”); Murder Most Foul (cold cases from Cleopatra to Dreyfus); Riddles of Ritual and Religion (Stonehenge, the pyramids); Conflict and Catastrophe (the Incas, the Light Brigade).
Much of the history we remember originated in short stories, novels, satires and films, he reveals. Popular historical propaganda depicted past generations as ignorant, blinkered and grimy. Ninjas were created for “swordand-sake” movies. The Spanish Inquisition was comparatively mild. Best mates Robin Hood and Richard I shared neither a country nor a language. Joan of Arc “wasn’t French, she never commanded any army... and she was not executed for witchcraft”, but a fake Joan unified France in the 19th century.
Who knew that the court of Nicholas and Alexandra was
“obsessed with the occult”, and both royals were addicted to “barbiturates, opium and cocaine”? Or that doubt was increasingly cast on the conclusions of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the forensic pathologist who sent many to the gallows, and he eventually took his own life in his laboratory? Though I’m not convinced “Lincoln Green” was really red.
Your grandmother’s sagas are disinformation writ small – or as Otto English puts it: “Family stories sit in the headwaters that feed the tributaries of the great toxic river of fake history.” Having sown doubt, he deconstructs nationalism, political apologies, Ladybird history, self-mythologising and “othering”. We aren’t the only ones who think we’re exceptional.
English’s research is solid – he has read Hitler’s turgid Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”), and even sat through a patriotic North Korean opera so that we don’t have to (he liked it). His historical “great lies” include: Winston Churchill was Britain’s Greatest Prime Minister; Abraham Lincoln Believed that “All Men Are Created Equal”, Hitler Was a Failed Artist, The Good Old Days Were Good. Churchill is revealed as flawed – though without mention of his 1910 plan to sterilise the “unfit”. Lincoln, though against slavery, didn’t support “the social and political equality of the white and black races”. Hitler’s feeble paintings were just part of his self-delusion. In the “good old days”, women and children had far fewer rights. In general, good stories like Alfred and the Cakes are as trustworthy as the ludicrous output of North Korea’s propaganda department.
Both books could have done with an editor. When they come off, as they mainly do, the jokes are funny: Donald calls an accountant “the chap with the abacus”, and English asks: “Why did Richard I die at the hands of a crossbowman clutching a frying pan, on the outskirts of Limoges? What was wrong with Bishop’s Stortford?”.
However, both authors are prone to garbling extended metaphors. “Churchill’s conflicting instincts left him playing an elaborate game of political Twister with a foot simultaneously in every political camp.” Churchill was a millipede? Yes, ignorance can be dangerous, but we need to make this clear, not obscure. I won’t say which writer perpetrated the following: “The knotweed of stupidism can sow deleterious ignorance of the past.”
Despite a few flaws, both books are enjoyable and informative. They should lead readers to doubt those facts that “everybody knows”, and therefore avoid both uninformed denial or the kind of overconfidence that shortened the life of a 19thcentury parachute designer. Why the frying pan? Time for a new legend.
Donald ★★★
English ★★★