"read ... books (which tend to record history with a little more accuracy)" . . .

I think not.

History is written by the winning side. The winning side wants to put itself in a good light, so it frequently lies about how it won.

Anything William Shakespeare wrote about monarchs and royal power struggles is pretty much tripe. He was writing FOR the Tudor monarch of the time, who had acquired the throne by an ancestors' deceitful action (Henry Tudor predating his reign by one day to make all those who fought for Richard III into traitors, to name but one), and would have probably been executed if he'd told the real truth. As for Richard III's alleged murder of the 'princes in the tower', that was debunked almost as soon as the Tudor line was off the throne, but STILL manages to find its way into history books printed now.

History is mainly boring. There are large chunks of politics that just won't make good entertainment. Imagine writing a screenplay for the 100 years war. It would get pretty boring, the same sides bashing each other for 80 years. Then there's the 37odd years of political wrangling that interspersed it (I can do maths, the 100 years war was actually 116 years long).

There are considerably more than 10 films that got it wrong. There are even more that deliberately got it wrong because it was not 'good entertainment'...

Worse than that, there are thousands of books that have 'got it wrong' because they were written from the winners' perspective, not as an accurate record of what actually happened.

As for 'The Other Boleyn Girl' - I've not seen the film but I have read the book, and it is a very good book. It is not historically accurate - it is classified as 'historical fiction' and won the 'Parker Romantic Novel of the Year' award in 2002, so quite clearly it is not meant to be an historical record - it is however, a fictionalised account of actual events, for which contemporary evidence still exists, as shown by the author's notes and large list of source materials.

The skill in writing historical novels and screenplays is to fill in the gaps that contemporary references allude to, or suggest, or miss out. That some prefer to fill the gaps in with wild imaginings and exciting events just panders to the human desire to be titilated and shocked.

Oh - and if 'cavewimmin' had looked like Raquel Welch and those other skinny actresses, they wouldn't have lasted the winter. It's more likely that your average 'cavewommin' was shaped more like Roseanne Barr ([pre-surgery) or Miriam Margolyes.

LTS