Whatever happened to all the heroes? Nearly fifty years after The Stranglers first asked this question, writer Otto English tackles the issue of whether many of history's most esteemed figures really deserve the heroic status that has been conferred on them.. Such a premise could easily have led to the unedifying spectacle of a modern author digging the dirt on some of our great historical icons. But no. This is an interesting and insightful book which puts the spotlight on some unjustly neglected heroes while also cutting the status of a few overly revered titans down to size.
In short, did Che Guevara really deserve to appear on so many posters and Rage Against the Machine t-shirts? Behind President Kennedy's smiles, was there really a dark side to Camelot? And so on. The book concludes with the author confronting the reputation of the defining heroic figure of his childhood: Marian Morrison aka. John Wayne (spoiler: he really was a bit of a nasty right-wing bastard),

A controversial look at some of our most famous heroes? This book dispels some of the 'facts' that we thought we knew while giving us alternatives with names that were not so well known to us. Interesting!
My thanks to NetGalley and Headline for this ARC in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

The author writes very well. I knew about Mother Theresa and she was not quite the saint she was made out to be but I learnt more about others profiled in the book than I knew before. The author has a great turn of phrase that is often witty and I enjoyed it very much. My only slight criticism is that there are often lengthy detours before you get to the main subject. In the example of the chapter on Mother Theresa, it seemed as though a lot of time is spent on Jimmy Savile which is important in setting out some context of putting highly questionable - nay, criminals - in the case of Savile, individuals on a pedestal but as the focus of that chapter was Mother Theresa, some concise paragraphs on Savile would have been sufficient to illustrate the point. Overall, I thought this a great book and learned much about these so-called 'heroes'.