‘Every account is slightly different’: who were the real Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday?

<p>A new book, Brothers of the Gun, explores the unlikely friendship between a complicated lawman and a cursed gambler</p><p>There’s a famous line from a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/johnford">John Ford</a> 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, <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/brothers-of-the-gun-wyatt-earp-doc-holliday-and-a-reckoning-in-tombstone-mark-lee-gardner/5ba5757f369d9a4d?ean=9780593471890&amp;next=t">Brothers of the Gun</a>: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and a Reckoning in Tombstone, concerns two major figures in such history. He doesn’t like Ford’s line.</p><p>“Every historian uses it, they just beat it to death,” Gardner says cheerfully, by video from Bozeman, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/montana">Montana</a>.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/nov/12/mark-lee-gardner-brothers-of-the-gun-review">Continue reading...</a>