Re: Churchill -- Man or Myth?

Scour Old Cereal Bowls wrote:
> Supposedly, 23 percent of (take your pick) all British people or
> British people under 20 believe that Winston Churchill was just a
> myth.
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1577511/Winston-Churchill-didn't-
> really-exist,-say-teens.html
>
> http://uktv.co.uk/gold/stepbystep/aid/598605
>
> UKTV sponsored the study, and the only bit on their website doesn't
> say anything about kids being asked, but it does say it's based on
> 3,000 responses.
>
> Doesn't that number suggest it's not a scientific survey?  The survey
> goes on to say that 58% believe Sherlock Holmes was real -- this is
> getting even more bogus sounding.  It goes on to list "Top ten
> fictional characters that the British public thinks are real" with #5
> being Mona Lisa -- except she wasn't fictional....
>

Their list of 'fictional' characters is more than a little weird:

1) King Arthur - 65% - ficitional in the Richard Harris Camelot sense, but

arguably a historical character in his Artos incarnation
3) Robin Hood - 51% - Many ficitional treatments but, again, there are 
historians who offer reasonable evidence that he's based on a real person.
5) Mona Lisa -35% - As you say, undeniably real
6) Dick Turpin - 34% - Incontestably a real person, though a real **** as 
opposed to the, er, Robin Hood persona of the fictional Turpins
8) The Three Musketeers - 17% - real people, though Dumas' work was
largely 
invention
9) Lady Godiva - 12% - Definitely real, though the ****d ride was almost 
certainly fiction
10) Robinson Crusoe - 5%  - The ficitional version of Alexander Selkirk

-- 
John Dean
Oxford