‘Every account is slightly different’: who were the real Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday?
A new book, Brothers of the Gun, explores the unlikely friendship between a complicated lawman and a cursed gamblerThere’s a famous line from a John Ford western, The Man Who...
By Martin Pengelly · The Guardian Culture
A new book, Brothers of the Gun, explores the unlikely friendship between a complicated lawman and a cursed gambler There’s a famous line from a John Ford western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Mark Lee Gardner is a leading historian of the old west whose new book, Brothers of the Gun : Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and a Reckoning in Tombstone, concerns two major figures in such history. He doesn’t like Ford’s line. “Every historian uses it, they just beat it to death,” Gardner says cheerfully, by video from Bozeman, Montana . Continue reading...