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

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Che Guevara, whose beret clad image adorned a million student bedsits in the 70s, became the monster he was trying to slay, English says. An emotional read, a story of one woman in Nigeria and her extended family, where personal tragedy unfolds against the backdrop of turbulent 1980’s Nigeria. Some of these pieces have never been seen; others have been read by millions of people around the world. In the week after Kennedy died she rang up a Life Magazine journalist and essentially said, come around for an interview.

Otto chocks up the good points and bad points as if trying to tip the scale of opinion: sure, he was a bit of a bastard and a racist to-boot but on the plus side he did a lot of work for charity and was an inspiration to millions of amputees. In this hour of despair, Prime Minister Winston Churchill receives a mysterious letter from an even more mysterious woman, offering a Faustian bargain and a promise of victory. There's definitely no harm in being real about the actuality of people's lives versus the image projected by their publicists.The police believe they know the killer’s identity but there’s no evidence against him, and the only thing linking him to the crime is the fact he’d been charged with sexually assaulting Helena just a few months previously. Powerful, stream of consciousness prose that feels exhausting but gets under your skin as an astute account of Northern Ireland’s social landscape, and ultimately delivers humour, and insight -it's quite brilliant. Biography: Author of bestseller Fake History, Otto English is the pen name of journalist Andrew Scott. If it was a 'myth' that the Terra Nova expedition was foremost a scientific endeavour, it's unlikely that the men would have bothered to stop to collect rock samples on their way back from the pole.

On the Discovery expedition farthest South, there is actually very little evidence that Scott and Shackleton fell out.From 2010, Scott began writing and tweeting about politics and history, gaining attention for his itinerant blog, he moved into journalism and has since written for Politico , the Independent , New Statesman , Daily Mail and many other publiations. Or the other one where somebody says, ‘You're completely impossible if I was married to you, I'd put poison in your tea.

Really interesting stories nicely linked together, however can’t be given a higher rating due to the editing. The reader is left with an understanding of historical events which is perhaps closer to the real ‘truth’ than the often quasi propaganda portrayed by Hollywood movies, newspapers and school history books. John F Kennedy’s heroic status has only grown after his assassination ,says English, with much of the myths around him concocted after he was killed. While their bodies are frozen, their minds, still active and awake, are uploaded into a massive quantum computer.Why we think it’s a great listen: An all-time Audible favorite that mixes historic fiction, adventure, and romance with one of the most fascinating literary devices: time travel. His upbringing was quite well to do, and such were the class divisons in the Argentina of his day that people of his class thought nothing of the teenage Guevara routinely raping the family maid. One of Jane Austen’s most beloved works, Pride and Prejudice, is vividly brought to life by Academy Award nominee Rosamund Pike ( Gone Girl). Whether this be by dint of government requirement or collective social delusion I shall leave it to other readers to decide. Rosamund Pike narrates this true story documentary about an extraordinary woman who deceives her friends, neighbors, boss and even her children.

These essays sometimes show our heroes to be fallible human beings (like my boyhood hero Captain Scott) but sometimes we’re left with an impression of someone so warped (like Mother Theresa) that you wonder if…well, you know what, I’ll let you listen and decide for yourself. We are not told that the reason Scott needed to get himself promoted as quickly as possible was due to becoming financially responsible for his mother and numerous sisters, after his father died leaving bad debts resulting in the family becoming destitute. Exploring everything from Captain Scott’s reckless hunt for glory to Coco Chanel’s murky Nazi past, Otto English dives into the hidden lives of some of history’s biggest names.I found some chapters more interesting or engaging than others, which is inevitable with this kind of book, but the overall thesis is that the ´great man’ theory of history leads to unworthy characters being lauded. Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College―Violet included. Wesley Autrey was a 52-year-old construction worker in New York and in January 2007, he was taking his two younger daughters across New York to their mother's house before he went on to work. Unravelling against the social and political turbulence of 1980s Nigeria, Stay With Me is a story of the fragility of married love, the undoing of family, the power of grief, and the all-consuming bonds of motherhood. They overthrew the corrupt and repressive Batista regime in Cuba, and at this point Guevara could be described was a hero, he says.