Finished reading: Fake Heroes by Otto English 📚
Great book.
Some of the targets are maybe a bit soft. For example, it’s no great shock to learn that John Wayne was a bit right wing, and not as rough-ty tough-ty in real life as he was on film.
Much of the book is debunking the film or Ladybird version of the heroes' lives. Those who prefer the Ladybird versions perhaps wont much like it. https://micro.blog/books/9781802795905
Interesting how the Amazon.COM reviews divide into two clear groups.
The "from the U.S." review has "Just another brit spreading propaganda."
The "from other countries" reviews say things like "brilliant", "excellent", and "fascinating".
One GoodReads review observes that if it gets the facts about Ted Kennedy wrong, and takes Jimmy Savile at his word, it probably gets a lot of other facts wrong too. Does the book really say that Kennedy drove into the ocean?
@JdeBP Thats interesting.
I did notice that about Ted Kennedy. Apparently, the water is a 'tidal pond'...so close to the ocean, but not quite the ocean as such
I can't quite understand what the reviewer would mean by 'taking Saville at his word' though. He takes the general view that Saville was a monster.I'll find the review.
I don't know enough about any of the 'heroes' in the book to really evaluate the general accuracy, but there was a lot that I'd heard from other sources
I guess it's not Robert Caro level biography but it was entertaining (I listened to it largely when walking the dog) and there were interesting points of comparison
I shall look up some of the reviews!
It's the 300 bike races claim. It was in his obituaries, but it was originally a claim made by Savile himself back in the 1980s, and repeated until the 2000s, which was not independently verified.