So much of what we know about historical events is based on generally accepted 'facts': Roman gladiators fought to the death; the Wild West was full of danger; the Wall Street Crash led to the Great Depression. But, history is, in fact, full of myths and misunderstandings that have become part of popular belief and wrongly coloured our understanding of historical figures and events. Each entry will discuss the case for and against commonly accepted 'facts', and corrects what you thought you knew about history. Entries include: Was Captain Scott iconic or incompetent? Did Benito Mussolini make the trains run on time? Was the Suffragette movement responsible for securing votes for women in Britain? Was Caligula an insane tyrant and sexual pervert? Bad History provides a rigorously researched and entertaining read, perfect for any history enthusiast who wants to get their facts straight.

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 - America's Founding Fathers must have been democrats, surely, and wasn't Captain Scott 'of the Antarctic' one of history's greatest leaders? 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, Bad History 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 world's history.