The poisonous legacy of Gone with the Wind

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The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells

by Sarah Churchwell (RRP: £27.99)

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I was a child of the Confederacy. My great aunt Vivien, doyenne of the Winnie Davis Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the “heritage” group responsible for putting up many of those now-disputed monuments to the rebellion of 1861, signed me up when I was eight years old. We used to make an annual pilgrimage to the site of Florida’s Battle of Natural Bridge, possibly the most insignificant skirmish in the American Civil War. In March 1865, Brigadier General John Newton and his expedition force tried to cross the St Marks River, just south of Tallahassee. Confederate boy-soldiers,…