Rorke's Drift 1879: 'Pinned like rats in a hole' (Campaign)
by Ian Knight

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Book Reviews of Rorke's Drift 1879: 'Pinned like rats in a hole' (Campaign)

Book Review: The facts behind the fiction.
Summary: 4 Stars

This books answers that impulse and paints a picture which is no less-stirring, but significantly more human and affecting. Far from the cliched and sterotypical characters of the film (the whimsically sentimental Welshmen, the raving missionary, the token female lust object, the class rivalry between Chard and Bromhead, the scoundrel Hook and the old-hand Sgt Major Bourne, etc) Knight's study presents us with real people in a real situation, and one can't help feeling the film would have been even better if it had stuck to the astonishing facts. Imagine, for example, the impact if early scenes in the film had included such details as the Rorke's Drift contingent being able to hear the gunshots at Isandlwana, a mere five miles away, or that lookouts mistook the advancing Zulu column for the return of their own Native Contingent.

The book is filled with excellent maps, time-lines and pictures - though some of colour plates provided by the book's illustrators are merely lurid where they should be evocative - and there is enough attention to the scale of the Zulu war as a whole, and its place in the Imperial ambitions of Britain to encourage further reading.

I saw the film 'Zulu' on Sunday afternoon many years ago, in my early teens, and was deeply moved by it. At that age I was unaware of the historical background to the Zulu war and the British presence in Africa, but the bare bones of the tale, the sheer human drama of being part of that contingent overwhelmed me. 'What must it have been like?', I kept asking myself.

Now, thanks to this book, I know.

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