Graeme Donald - Lies, Damned Lies and History: A Catalogue of Historical Errors and Misunderstandings

Did Boudicca really exist?

A statue of limitations

Realities of life in the Roman arena

The truth about Antony and Cleopatra

A Trojan War that never happened

The Olympics as they really were

What really happened at Thermopylae

Did Nero burn down Rome or was it all an accident?

No Israeli slaves in Egypt

Was Caligula really that bad?

Messiah myths

It seems the lady was straight!

And some have greatness thrust upon them

Caesars real exit-line

The real architect of Venice

What did Magna Carta ever do for us?

A right lady wronged

Another lady wronged

Columbus; the original miss-America

Harold keeps an eye out for the truth at Hastings

Author of his own down-fall

Edward II, the worst poker-player in history

The myth of the female Pope

Hardly a capitol offence

Who killed Becket and why

The rats got bad press

Macbeth, a good and rightful king

Disney got it wrong

Martin Luther a tainted saint who fell between two stools

No French Maid, she!

The Spanish Inquisition revealed

Why we never hear of the Pilgrim Mothers

Nothing at stake, here

Links from the Cliveden Set to Happy Valley?

What really happened to the Hindenburg?

London red in truth and lore

Captain Cook, discoverer of Australia?

Nothing glib to say here; just read it

Dont blame the OLeary cow for the Chicago Fire

Walpole and Washington were not first to the post

A terrible way to die, even in the nineteenth century

Swiss neutrality?

How the Germans really treated Jessie Owens

An unpleasant little chap with unusual taste inhot-water bottles

The realities of the American West

Titanic myths

Will the real John Bull please stand up!

What really killed Catherine the Great?

Revolution, French-style

Mao and his imaginary march

Hitlers Reichstag Fire

There was no Faith, Hope and Charity

We never lost eleven days

The evolution of a lie

The Liberty Bell

Who gave who syphilis and how

The King and eye-eye!

Why the Zulu never heard Men of Harlech at Rorkes Drift

The myth of the German-language vote

Who should give thanks for Thanksgiving?

Why the Americans really dropped the bomb

The suicide rate during the Great Crash

The myth of Hitler and the occult

Henry Ford is famed for saying that history is bunk, a statement that is something of a curates egg in that it is right in parts only. Apart from the biased input from the history is written by the victors lobby, the records of our past bear the scars of the interference from others with axes to grind on their spinning agenda. But the truth is still out there, as Agent Mulder would say; all you have to do is unearth it.

Some historical myths are home-grown, some are invented by outsiders, some are dreamed up by administrations or prominent individuals desperate to hide the truth of their actions from public view and some are invented by the public themselves, either to exaggerate out of all proportion some minor act of heroism or to hide the enormity of their own excesses from themselves. A fine example of that last category is the Londoners invention of the Blitz Spirit of Nazi-bombed London when the chirpy Cockneys supposedly met each onslaught with a Lorks a-mercy and a twang of their braces before breaking into a stirring rendition of Down at the Old Bull andBush. This myth of togetherness was invented to gloss over the fact that Londoners showed what they were really made of under cover of the blackout; incidents of rape, murder, looting, mugging and the robbing of the dead went through the roof while the public howled for accommodation, capitulation, anything to halt the war that 40 per cent believed was all about the bloody Jews.

Nor can the power of cinema be underestimated for it is from the silver screen that we inherit such false notions as witches being burnt at the stake in Merrie England and the indelible image of the American West where it turns out that almost half the of so-called cowboys were non-white and so few could afford sidearms that gunfights were a rarity. You were far more likely to be gunned down in Victorian London than in Dodge City, Tombstone or Abilene.

The power of myth lies in the fact that most invented versions of events present the public with something that is either convenient or simplistic we wear the white hats and the baddies have black hats, or whatever or with something that is guaranteed acceptance because it fits with national self-image. While most other nations perceive the British to have been arrogant, self-deluded, rapacious, duplicitous and dictatorial, the British see themselves as stiff upper-lipped defenders of the moral high-ground who meet defeat and victory as the same impostor, to paraphrase Kiplings If. This being the case, the British public were psychologically primed to fall hook, line and sinker for the Dunkirk myth, complete with tales of the guards ignoring the Stukas and strafing Messerschmitts to conduct formation drills on the open beaches while awaiting embarkation. The reality was of course much darker and very different. Troops deserted to go looting and raping in the nearby French towns and villages and many of those who still had weapons threw them away. The withdrawal was a terrible betrayal of the French and the Belgians who were left to face the German advance alone; any of their number trying to embark at the beach were met by British guns. And as for the flotilla of plucky civilians popping across the Channel to lend a hand, the Cholmondeley-Warners and Barrington Farquhars of these isles neer set sail.

And things are no different in America, where, for example, the Amerindians have been painted as mindless savages to justify the countless broken treaties and massacres and, despite the Hollywood image of the Plains Indians preying on wagon trains, such attacks were few and most often retaliatory with the greatest wagon-train massacre of all time being inflicted not by Indians but by rapacious Mormons. As for Custers so-called Last Stand, this had to be marketed as a perfidious massacre by blood-crazed savages to hide from the public the fact that Custer was a vainglorious idiot who, had he survived, would have been court-marshalled for his stupidity. Ignoring all orders and incoming intelligence, Custer attacked a vastly superior force and had to make a run for it; there was no Last Stand, only a runaway scrape during which some evidence points to Custer having shot himself. Faced with no other alternative, the US Army did what it always did with dead idiots and rebranded Custer as a hero.

But there are few real heroes, those perceived as such are almost invariably undeserving individuals who either seek such limelight or have it thrust upon them for reasons of national morale. And, on the other side of the coin, many of those painted as demons were not really that bad. Elizabeth Bathory, aka Countess Dracula, never bathed in blood; Vlad the Impaler was in fact a national hero; Bad King John was a far better ruler than Good King Richard; Bloody Mary killed fewer of her subjects than did Good Queen Bess and the Spanish Inquisition was in reality remarkably tolerant. It is all a question of who gets to write what.