<p>So many historical truths handed down by teachers or historians, and repeated by the press, prove on closer scrutiny to be at best misleading, and at worst deliberately falsified. Yet they are often so deeply rooted that we take them as fact – Americas Founding Fathers must have been democrats, surely, and wasnt Captain Scott of the Antarctic one of historys greatest leaders?<br>Some historical facts are little more than fables, distorted in the retelling; others are the result of deliberate attempts to mislead, or to cover up a discreditable past. Entertaining but authoritative, <i>Bad History</i> debunks a wealth of historical errors, accidental or deliberate. In doing so, it exposes many falsehoods that have wrongly – and sometimes dangerously – influenced our understanding of the worlds history.</p>