HARVEST OF THE SUN - Book review

E.V. Thompson’s third book in the Retallick Saga Harvest of the Sun was published in 1978. It’s a direct sequel of Chase the Wind. 

Josh Retallick and Miriam Thackeray with their young son Daniel are sailing to Australia when their ship is wrecked off the Skeleton Coast of South West Africa.

Their small party encounter the Bushmen who have survived in the harsh land and climate for thousands of years. At times of prolonged drought the Bushpeople would abandon newborn babies in order that the mother would survive. (p59).

Next they befriend the Herero tribesmen where they find a German missionary, Hugo Walder, whose ‘capacity for loving his fellow-men was as large as the frame that held his great heart’ (p98).                   

Josh, Miriam and Daniel live with the missionary and the Herero. They become hardened to the land and its people, treading with care where the neighbouring chief Jonker is concerned. And there is the chief’s vicious ally, the Boer Jacobus Albrecht to contend with as well. ‘Africa is a restless continent, ever changing and shifting in moods – a vast rumbling pot-pourri where fortunes swirl this way and that, like the sand shifting before the four winds’ (p133).

As this is a saga, the narrative – third-person omniscient – spans the period from the early 1840s to 1858. The family also befriends a Jewish trader Aaron and his daughter Hannah. By the time Daniel is seventeen he is an experienced tracker and good shot with a rifle. There are mining opportunities for Josh here too. Inevitably there are clashes between Jonker’s people and the Herero and Josh and his family are caught in between. The reader soon cares about these characters as they overcome a succession of travails, not least the neighbouring Zulu tribesmen, successors to the mighty Shaka. Sadly, good people succumb. Also, past events in their saga have a tendency to rear up and bite. There’s tension, suspense, humility, humanity, physical and geographical conflict, and great insights of the period and place. Indeed, Thompson repeatedly puts the reader in the scene and does not shirk from revealing the unpleasant gruesome aspects of the time along with the raw beauty of the land. This is history and as such needs no trigger warnings.

Any fans of H Rider Haggard or Wilbur Smith would appreciate this saga. The next instalment is Singing Spears (which I read out of order in 1990 and was the first Thompson book I’d read – and clearly not the last).

Greatest Action Movies Ever

If you’re a fan of action movies, then here’s a magazine to buy, featuring no less than 54 films that ‘defined the genre’.  This is the first in a series from Empire magazine (UK): Empire Classics.

Much of the content is evident from the cover. There are films in several action genres such as: tales of adventure, adrenaline rush, comic book heroes, war, wild west, spies and history.  

Apart from the generous assembly of stills, interesting, humorous, and even enlightening essays accompany each chosen film.

Inevitably, there may be some selected here to the exclusion of your favourite within a particular genre. Still, the span is broad – from Yojimbo to Duel, from Zulu to High Noon, from The Adventures of Robin Hood to The Ipcress File.

I’ve found the selection enjoyable (and, thankfully, the swearing is kept to a minimum, which is a pleasant change for an Empire magazine). I found that I’ve seen 40 of the 54!

Make a date - January 1, 7, 11 and 22

Some time ago I published a regular monthly magazine column linking a set selection of dates in history. The series was popular. I'm busy coordinating the articles into book form. As today is 1 January, here are a number of linked events for that date plus three other January dates. To avoid repetition, I've simply indicated the relevant date in brackets. Apologies for the length of this entry! The dates for this article are:

 1, 7, 11 and 22 January

January’s the time when we put up our pristine calendars and look forward to a new year full of promise – if you’re an optimist, of course. At one time calendars could present a little problem or two. Take for example the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582 (named after Pope Gregory XIII), which was to replace the Julian (named after Julius Caesar, which began in 45 BC). It was bound to cause consternation. After all, ten days were eliminated – 5 to 14 October. Only Spain, Portugal and parts of Italy started to use the new calendar in 1582 – now, a calendar for that year would make a priceless collectors’ item.

Friar Roger Bacon – not to be confused with Sir Francis Bacon (22), the philosopher who was born in 1561 – felt that this action was necessary some three hundred years earlier, calculating that the Julian calendar had been overestimating the solar year in excess of eleven minutes per year. Bacon was ignored, his representations misplaced in time, but by the 1500s scientists were clamouring for a correction, even Copernicus joining the fray. Those calculations were remarkable; the length of time the Gregorian calendar is off from the true solar year is 25.96768 seconds per year.

Most Catholic countries accepted the Gregorian calendar between 1582 and 1584; Scotland adopted it in 1600; Protestant Germany accepted it partially in 1700 and fully in 1775.

Almost two hundred years after its creation, Great Britain and the American colonies accepted the Gregorian calendar in 1752; Parliament eliminated 3 to 13 September of that year and London bankers shouted ‘Give us back our eleven days’, protesting against paying their taxes on 25 March, eleven days early. Taxes were finally paid on 5 April, which remains tax day in the UK today. It also plays havoc with time-travellers, as you can imagine!

China accepted the Gregorian calendar in 1949.

As you’d expect, the first day of a year is a significant start-point for any number of changes. On this day in 1651 Charles II was crowned King of Scotland. And 150 years later to the day the legislative union of the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland was completed to form the United Kingdom.

 
Three years later, French rule was ended in Haiti and eight years after that the importation of slaves into the United States was banned (though it was another fifty-five years to the day before Abraham Lincoln gave his Emancipation Declaration). Pioneers of a different stamp were accepted into the United States when Ellis Island opened in 1892 for immigrants (1).
 
Just before the close of the nineteenth century, Spanish rule in Cuba ended in 1899 (Fidel Castro seizing power on the same day sixty years later). In 1901 the Commonwealth of Australia was established and eleven years later the Republic of China.

A regular staple on television screens, the Vienna New Year’s concerts actually began in 1939. Nothing to make a song and dance over, true – though possibly singers who died on this day might have given it a go, such as Hank Williams (died 1953), Maurice Chevalier (died 1972) and Ray Walston (died 2001) of South Pacific and My Favourite Martian fame. Fifteen years earlier Gershwin completed Rhapsody in Blue (7); and on the same day two other famous musicians were born – Francis Poulenc (1899) who actually wrote music especially for the man with the golden flute, Jean-Pierre Rampal (1922).

 
The first day of January is significant regarding the UK’s love-hate relationship with the EU, which began in 1958 when the European Economic Community was established; the UK, Ireland and Denmark joined the EEC in 1973 (gosh, that was generous of the French to let us in at last!) Greece entered the European Community in 1981, Spain and Portugal in 1984 and the single market within the EC was introduced nine years later. Yet another name-change heralded Austria, Finland and Sweden joining the European Union in 1995 and four years later the euro currency was introduced, the banknotes and coins becoming legal tender in 2002 (which seems a long time ago now!)

As a nation of shopkeepers, the UK ought to welcome the euro and the simplification of the immense marketplace it offers; it would be interesting to know what Harry Gordon Selfridge (11) would have thought – he was born in 1858, the same day as the coal-miners’ once-powerful trade union leader, Arthur Scargill, in 1938. Scargill was a member of the Young Communist League from 1955 until 1962 when he joined the Labour Party. The so-called Scargill miners’ strike brought down Edward Heath’s government in 1974, a year after Heath took the UK into the European Community (1). Since those on mainland Europe couldn’t successfully invade us or beat us, they decided to join us.

Perhaps we’ve never recovered from losing England’s last possession on the continent in 1558 – Calais, which France took back (7); well, we did let them win occasionally. That Channel might divide us, but plenty of people have attempted to bridge the gap, not least the Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries, who in 1785 were the first to travel by air in a gas balloon from Dover to Calais (7). It was another hundred years before the more famous Montgolfier brothers flew over the Channel (1); incredibly, it was a mere fifty years later in 1935 that the first woman flew from Hawaii to California – plucky Amelia Earhart (11).

 

Amelia Earhart (Wikipedia commons)

When Earhart was twenty she visited her sister in Toronto and saw first-hand the survivors from WWI. She received nurse’s aide training and worked in the military hospital, handing out medicines. Here, she contracted Spanish flu during the pandemic which lasted from March 1918 until June 1920. Spanish flu claimed about fifty million lives. After about a year, Earhart recovered but would suffer from chronic sinusitis thereafter, which affected her flying. Because there was censorship during the World War, and Spain was neutral without news blackouts, when the flu pandemic was reported in Spain, it was wrongly assumed this was where the disease originated, when in fact it was virulent in North America and all of Europe, not only Spain. 

Spain ceded Port Egmont in the Falkland Islands to England in 1771 and, sixty-nine years later to the day, British colonists reached New Zealand (22). Many colonists might have thought life was a lottery – and could bear in mind that the first recorded lottery in England (11) was in 1569.

Still dwelling on the other side of the globe, it might have had something to do with the growing threat of Japan, but in 1943 both the US and Britain gave up all territorial rights to China (11).

 
Perhaps there were no new lands to discover once the Pacific Ocean was navigated, but there were still places ‘out there’. In 1610 Galileo Galilei observed the four largest moons of Jupiter for the first time (7): Callisto was a beautiful maiden who enticed Jupiter, thereby invoking the wrath of Juno, Jupiter's wife. She turned Callisto into a bear. After Io's romance with Jupiter, she was turned into a heifer, pursued by Juno's gadfly. To elude the ever-watchful Juno, Jupiter approached Europa as a bull; she climbed upon his back, and the two flew off to Crete, where Europa became an object of worship. Ganymede, a “handsome youth” attracted Jupiter's attention too, who whisked the boy off to become a cup-bearer to the gods.

Galileo (Wikipedia commons)

 
In 1787 William Herschel found Titania and Oberon, the two moons of Uranus (11); and a mere fourteen years later the first asteroid, 1 Ceres, was discovered.

On the same day Galileo made his discovery (7), but nine years earlier, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, led a revolt in London against Queen Elizabeth. Happily, the UK’s other long-lived monarch didn’t have to put up with such things. Although Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1887 in Delhi (1), her troops didn’t get it all their own way by a long assegai.

Sixty-three years earlier – the young queen had been on the throne just five years - the Ashanti warriors crushed the British forces in the Gold Coast (22) and on the same day in 1879 Zulu troops massacred the British at Isandlwana, just a short time before the famous battle of Rorke’s Drift. The Anglo-Zulu war started some eleven days earlier (11). Stories of all those flashing spears, knives and naked bloody heroism probably appealed to someone born in 1906, Robert E Howard (22) - the creator of the mythical Hyborean Age warrior Conan. And on the same day at the beginning of the twentieth century – 1901 – Queen Victoria died, to be succeeded by Edward VII.

 
On the same day in 1924 Ramsay MacDonald became the first Labour Prime Minister; in fact he was one of many distinguished people who visited author Thomas Hardy, who died four years later (11).

This writer thinks that’s about it for this January subsection.

 

Happy new year!

Reminiscences - A lifetime on Zulu

A lifetime ago, it seems now. And, reviewing the distance travelled, the places visited, and the experiences gained over that draft of two and a half years, it seems like it was a lifetime onboard.

I joined HMS Zulu, my first seagoing RN ship, in April 1967 while she was undergoing refit in Rosyth. This was in the days when the Royal Navy was much larger than at present and their ships travelled the world, calling in at many ports. Different, nowadays, I know…

 

 

We sailed for Portsmouth on 29 April, 1967. We then went to Portland for a week’s trials, visited Amsterdam, my first foreign port call, though I had been abroad with a school trip on MS Dunera, visiting Vigo, Lisbon and Jersey. Then we went to Greenock, Glasgow, Douglas in the Isle of Man, Liverpool, Llandudno, Swansea, and back to Portsmouth on 10 June. Yes, we got about in those days. It wasn’t just plain sailing, of course; between destinations we’d be undergoing training, Action Stations and all manner of drills. [Action Stations, drills, Work Up all deserve separate blogs, believe me.] And of course we worked weekends and the weather wasn’t always docile as we crossed oceans and seas.

The ship had a ship’s magazine, roughly 8 sheets of foolscap, printed from Gestetner skins with contributions from the crew. The magazine was called Warrior and I inherited it from my predecessor, though I wasn’t the editor, (the Captain’s secretary, a sub Lieutenant was the editor); I was just the sub-editor and typist then…

 

 

This was the masthead I designed; published every Saturday at sea. [Perhaps some snippets will crop up in this blog in later months…] There was recreation time, naturally, Sundays if not on duty. And there were film nights – Zulu was on permanent loan to the ship and we viewed it often. [You can read about this film here]

A whole day at Portsmouth and then we went to Rotterdam for four days, Portsmouth, Bangor in Northern Ireland – we became the ‘ship at the bottom of the street’.

 

'Ship at the bottom of the street', Bangor, NI - from the Spectator newspaper

 

Thence to Hartlepool, Rosyth, Portsmouth, Portland in February 1968 until 3 April – Work Up, during which time we were worked hard. There followed Rosyth, Bootle, Cardiff, Portland, Penzance, Greenock, Campbeltown, Greenock, Fairlie, and Rosyth.

The advantage with being on a ship was that wherever you travelled, all your gear, everything travelled with you – unlike the mobile units of the Army or Air Force.

Sailing from Rosyth, we arrived in Gibraltar on 8 July 1968; my first visit, though not my last, here. Approaching the Rock from the sea is captivating, a beautiful even romantic sight.

Two days later we arrived in Malta. Little did I know how much this famous island would figure in my later life! That was just for a day’s sojourn, however. Then we were off to Izmir, Turkey and stayed for two days. While we were in the Mediterranean, monitoring the Soviet warships, among other things, Malta became our base of operations, so we kept popping in and out, staying for the one day, mostly. Naturally, as we had onboard duties, there was no question of going ashore on every occasion. These stays were scheduled for stores, new personnel and fuelling, among other things.

 
We visited Elba, one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s homes-in-exile; a beautiful island, then Kavalla, Greece, with its gorgeous unspoiled beach, and after a final stopover at Malta, on to Gibraltar, arriving 5 September. As this was a slightly longer stay, I joined some shipmates on an MFV across to Tangier, taking in the sights, including the suk and camel-riding! We sailed from Gibraltar four days’ later, arriving in Portland for a couple of days, then on to Den Helder for an official visit, and back up to Rosyth for three weeks, to allow personnel to get some leave in.
 
Then it was back to Portland on 21 October, Gibraltar for a day, Malta for four days; here, I toured the island using the local bus system. Then on to Naples; sadly, Vesuvius was clouded over but Pompeii was so memorable, even to this day, and of course since then more excavation has occurred.

Pompeii - Vesuvius in background...

There followed a brief official 4-day visit to Nice, where I attended a church service (that was all I was permitted ashore since I was growing a beard and it wasn’t quite presentable).
 
We docked in Portsmouth 4 December for a day, then went to Rosyth for a lay-off and seasonal leave break (ship maintenance), though of course personnel had to be there on duty over the period.

A new year and new ports of call. Portsmouth for four days or so, then on to St Helena (felt as though we were following Boney – visited his attractive villa, (where the wallpaper purportedly poisoned him), then on to Durban (apartheid still much in evidence, a visit of mixed feelings, beautiful country, and saw Zulus too), then on the Beira Patrol blockading Ian Smith’s regime, stopping off at Mombasa for seven days in March, then we sailed for Mahé in the Seychelles, an idyllic island, though only there for two days, followed by a three week stay at Bahrain where we met up with the RAF personnel stationed there, enjoying their bar facilities and swimming pool (I almost got roped in to go for the Guinness Book of Records for typing).  After this, it was Muscat, Bahrain, and across the ocean to Karachi.

 
The ship stayed in Karachi for five days and for the long weekend I and a handful of other chosen few were selected to fly up to Islamabad as guests of the diplomatic corps serving there. We ended up being driven along the Khyber Pass to the border with Afghanistan – a fair portion of that is narrated in Under the Queen’s Colours - see here

After Karachi, back to Bahrain, Dubai, Doha, Colombo, Ceylon [now Sri Lanka] (another beautiful island). We left Colombo on 21 August and four days later we arrived at Singapore, where we stayed at the dockyard for almost a month while the ship underwent maintenance and local leave was taken. Exotic smells, food and weather – clockwork rain, no less!

Thence on to Yokohama for a week and to Hong Kong for two weeks, then Singapore. I flew back to UK from Singapore (my draft completed, already scheduled to join HMS Dolphin (Flag Officer Submarines) in Gosport; I was tasked with taking the masters of our ship’s commission book to the Portsmouth printers, having been a sub-editor on this project. (The ship went on to Durban, then Portsmouth and arrived in Rosyth 21 December.)

A memorable and in many ways remarkable two-and-a-half years.

 

Make a date - 7 January - Slaves, Space and Spain

Some time ago I published a regular monthly magazine column linking a set selection of dates in history. The series was popular. I'm busy coordinating the articles into book form. As today is 7 January, here are a number of linked events for that date plus three other January dates. To avoid repetition, I've simply indicated the relevant date in brackets. The three dates for this article are:

 

1, 7, 11 and 22 January

January’s the time when we put up our pristine calendars and look forward to a new year full of promise – if you’re an optimist, of course. At one time calendars could present a little problem or two. Take for example the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582 (named after Pope Gregory XIII), which was to replace the Julian (named after Julius Caesar, which began in 45 BC). It was bound to cause consternation. After all, ten days were eliminated – 5 to 14 October. Only Spain, Portugal and parts of Italy started to use the new calendar in 1582 – now, a calendar for that year would make a priceless collectors’ item.

Julius Caesar (portrait, wiki-common)

Friar Roger Bacon – not to be confused with Sir Francis Bacon (22), the philosopher who was born in 1561 – felt that this action was necessary some three hundred years earlier, calculating that the Julian calendar had been overestimating the solar year in excess of eleven minutes per year. Bacon was ignored, his representations misplaced in time, but by the 1500s scientists were clamouring for a correction, even Copernicus joining the fray. Those calculations were remarkable; the length of time the Gregorian calendar is off from the true solar year is 25.96768 seconds per year.

Most Catholic countries accepted the Gregorian calendar between 1582 and 1584; Scotland adopted it in 1600; Protestant Germany accepted it partially in 1700 and fully in 1775.

Almost two hundred years after its creation, Great Britain and the American colonies accepted the Gregorian calendar in 1752; Parliament eliminated 3 to 13 September of that year and London bankers shouted ‘Give us back our eleven days’, protesting against paying their taxes on 25 March, eleven days early. Taxes were finally paid on 5 April, which remains tax day in the UK today. It also plays havoc with time-travellers, as you can imagine!

China accepted the Gregorian calendar in 1949.

As you’d expect, the first day of a year is a significant start-point for any number of changes. On this day in 1651 Charles II was crowned King of Scotland. And 150 years later to the day the legislative union of the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland was completed to form the United Kingdom.

Three years later, French rule was ended in Haiti and eight years after that the importation of slaves into the United States was banned (though it was another fifty-five years to the day before Abraham Lincoln gave his Emancipation Declaration). Pioneers of a different stamp were accepted into the United States when Ellis Island opened in 1892 for immigrants (1).

 
Just before the close of the nineteenth century, Spanish rule in Cuba ended in 1899 (Fidel Castro seizing power on the same day sixty years later). In 1901 the Commonwealth of Australia was established and eleven years later the Republic of China.
 
A regular staple on television screens, the Vienna New Year’s concerts actually began in 1939. Nothing to make a song and dance over, true – though possibly singers who died on this day might have given it a go, such as Hank Williams (died 1953), Maurice Chevalier (died 1972) and Ray Walston (died 2001) of South Pacific and My Favourite Martian fame. Fifteen years earlier Gershwin completed Rhapsody in Blue (7); and on the same day two other famous musicians were born – Francis Poulenc (1899) who actually wrote music especially for the man with the golden flute, Jean-Pierre Rampal (1922).

 

The first day of January is significant regarding the UK’s love-hate relationship with the EU, which began in 1958 when the European Economic Community was established; the UK, Ireland and Denmark joined the EEC in 1973 (gosh, that was generous of the French to let us in at last!) Greece entered the European Community in 1981, Spain and Portugal in 1984 and the single market within the EC was introduced nine years later. Yet another name-change heralded Austria, Finland and Sweden joining the European Union in 1995 and four years later the euro currency was introduced, the banknotes and coins becoming legal tender in 2002.

As a nation of shopkeepers, the UK ought to welcome the euro and the simplification of the immense marketplace it offers; it would be interesting to know what Harry Gordon Selfridge (11) would have thought – he was born in 1858, the same day as the coal-miners’ once-powerful trade union leader, Arthur Scargill, in 1938. Scargill was a member of the Young Communist League from 1955 until 1962 when he joined the Labour Party. The so-called Scargill miners’ strike brought down Edward Heath’s government in 1974, a year after Heath took the UK into the European Community (1). Since those on mainland Europe couldn’t successfully invade us or beat us, they decided to join us.

Perhaps we’ve never recovered from losing England’s last possession on the continent in 1558 – Calais, which France took back (7); well, we did let them win occasionally. That Channel might divide us, but plenty of people have attempted to bridge the gap, not least the Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries, who in 1785 were the first to travel by air in a gas balloon from Dover to Calais (7). It was another hundred years before the more famous Montgolfier brothers flew over the Channel (1); incredibly, it was a mere fifty years later in 1935 that the first woman flew from Hawaii to California – plucky Amelia Earhart (11).

Montgolfier balloon

When Earhart was twenty she visited her sister in Toronto and saw first-hand the survivors from WWI. She received nurse’s aide training and worked in the military hospital, handing out medicines. Here, she contracted Spanish flu during the pandemic which lasted from March 1918 until June 1920. Spanish flu claimed about fifty million lives. After about a year, Earhart recovered but would suffer from chronic sinusitis thereafter, which affected her flying. Because there was censorship during the World War, and Spain was neutral without news blackouts, when the flu pandemic was reported in Spain, it was wrongly assumed this was where the disease originated, when in fact it was virulent in North America and all of Europe, not only Spain. 

Amelia Earhart (wiki-common)

 
Spain ceded Port Egmont in the Falkland Islands to England in 1771 and, sixty-nine years later to the day, British colonists reached New Zealand (22). Many colonists might have thought life was a lottery – and could bear in mind that the first recorded lottery in England (11) was in 1569.

Still dwelling on the other side of the globe, it might have had something to do with the growing threat of Japan, but in 1943 both the US and Britain gave up all territorial rights to China (11).

Perhaps there were no new lands to discover once the Pacific Ocean was navigated, but there were still places ‘out there’. In 1610 Galileo Galilei observed the four largest moons of Jupiter for the first time (7): Callisto was a beautiful maiden who enticed Jupiter, thereby invoking the wrath of Juno, Jupiter's wife. She turned Callisto into a bear. After Io's romance with Jupiter, she was turned into a heifer, pursued by Juno's gadfly. To elude the ever-watchful Juno, Jupiter approached Europa as a bull; she climbed upon his back, and the two flew off to Crete, where Europa became an object of worship. Ganymede, a “handsome youth” attracted Jupiter's attention too, who whisked the boy off to become a cup-bearer to the gods.

 
In 1787 William Herschel found Titania and Oberon, the two moons of Uranus (11); and a mere fourteen years later the first asteroid, 1 Ceres, was discovered.

On the same day Galileo made his discovery (7), but nine years earlier, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, led a revolt in London against Queen Elizabeth. Happily, the UK’s other long-lived monarch didn’t have to put up with such things. Although Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1887 in Delhi (1), her troops didn’t get it all their own way by a long assegai.

 
Sixty-three years earlier – the young queen had been on the throne just five years - the Ashanti warriors crushed the British forces in the Gold Coast (22) and on the same day in 1879 Zulu troops massacred the British at Isandlwana, just a short time before the famous battle of Rorke’s Drift. While serving on HMS Zulu, we had a permanent copy of the famous film – and a regular ship’s newspaper, The Warrior. The Anglo-Zulu war started some eleven days earlier (11). Stories of all those flashing spears, knives and naked bloody heroism probably appealed to someone born in 1906, Robert E Howard (22) - the creator of the mythical Hyborean Age warrior Conan. And on the same day at the beginning of the twentieth century – 1901 – Queen Victoria died, to be succeeded by Edward VII.
 
On the same day in 1924 Ramsay MacDonald became the first Labour Prime Minister; in fact he was one of many distinguished people who visited author Thomas Hardy, who died four years later (11).

This writer thinks that’s about it for now...

 

Book of the film: Zulu

Well, sort of. The book is ZULU – WITH SOME GUTS BEHIND IT! By Sheldon Hall

The subtitle of this book is ‘The making of the epic movie”, which says what it means. Sheldon Hall has comprehensively accomplished just that, describing in fascinating detail the research for the original article by author John Prebble, the development of the screenplay, the creation of the film’s characters, the casting, finding the locations in South Africa, the actual filming and editing, the music, plus the final release and the reviews and criticism. Released in 1964, the film has remained popular for over forty years and this book goes a long way to explaining why.

The events in the film took place in January 1879 during the Anglo-Zulu War on the day following the British defeat at Isandhlwana, later filmed as Zulu Dawn. The small mission at Rorke’s Drift consisted of six hundred square yards of poorly defensible land and was manned by eight officers and ninety-seven other ranks with thirty-six sick and wounded men in the mission hospital. Moving against Rorke’s Drift was a force of four thousand Zulu warriors. Eleven Victoria Crosses were won in a single day in the battle of Rorke’s Drift. Reprinted for the first time is the entire article, Slaughter in the Sun, written by historical author John Prebble and published in the Lilliput magazine for 1958.

Inevitably, film producers and writers are criticised when they tamper with real-life historical characters. These critics tend to forget that the film isn’t a documentary but a dramatic representation and, in Hall’s words, ‘I believe it is not only defensible but necessary to reinvent real-life figures for their new role in a drama.’ If viewers of these films confuse the drama with actual history, then that’s not the fault of the producers. Several descendants of the soldiers at Rorke’s Drift were upset over the portrayal of their relatives in the film.

Hall quotes at length from contributors to the website http://rorkesdriftvc.com and one in particular (Diana Blackwell) comments, ‘Despite its historical basis, Zulu is a work of art, not a documentary. It takes a few liberties with the facts, but always in the interest of strengthening the story.’ Diana points out that the film has drawn more attention to the battle than all the other sources combined and serious historical studies have resulted directly from the exposure given by the film. Much more is known about that conflict now than at the time when Prebble did his initial research.

Stanley Baker was co-producer and main star of the film. During the filming he and his wife made friends with Prince Buthelezi. Baker was awarded a knighthood in Wilson’s resignation honours and before receiving it from the Queen he contracted pneumonia in Malaga and died, aged forty-eight. His Zulu friend sent a wreath to ‘the finest white man he had ever met.’ Baker kept a secret cheque-book, discovered after his death, from which he gave money to out-of-work actors and broken-down boxers.

The book would have been interesting simply covering the making of the film, but it is immeasurably better because of snippets like the above scattered throughout.

Although Zulu is considered to be Michael Caine’s first film role, it wasn’t. But this was the movie that gave him prominent billing, even if his fee was only a mere £4,000 – a lot to a struggling actor in those days. What is quite striking is the generous encouragement and fostering of Caine – Jack Hawkins said he’s ‘the best thing in this film’ while Baker deprecates, saying the film didn’t make Caine a star, it only helped – Caine ‘made himself into a star.’ James Booth received mixed reviews about his part as the ne’er-do-well Private Hook. He enjoyed it immensely. Ironically, he appeared in the Newcastle upon Tyne Theatre playing Captain Hook in Peter Pan. At least he’d been promoted!


(The drawing is a sketch I made from a photo in 1964, when I was 16 - ye Gods, that's a long time ago...!)

One of the most memorable characters was Colour-Sergeant Bourne played by Nigel Green who was coincidentally born in South Africa. Some actors received mixed notices but Green was praised from every quarter. This part gained him recognition and more film roles. Subsequently, he appeared in two Michael Caine movies, The Ipcress File and Play Dirty. The voice-over narration was done by an old friend of Baker’s, Richard Burton, who refused to take a fee.

The location filming couldn’t take place at the original site of Rorke’s Drift since a modern school and monuments to the battle had been erected over the mission and the battlefield. Besides, from an aesthetic point of view, the scenery wasn’t that great. They eventually settled on Drakensberg mountain range about 160km from Rorke’s Drift.

Many real Zulus were employed as extras and stunt men. Chief (Then Prince) Buthelezi played the Zulu chief King Cetewayo. He went on to become Minister of Home Affairs in the new South Africa and was even appointed Acting President of the Republic by Nelson Mandela, who had previously been his political rival. He is particularly sad that so many people involved in the film ‘are no more.’

The biggest problem for the director was not arranging the fight scenes but actually getting the Zulus out of the shade – they didn’t care much for the sun. The working relationship between the white crew and the Zulus was good and memorable, despite the dark shadow of inhuman apartheid regime. My ship called in at Durban in the late 1960s and we were appalled at the way the blacks were treated. Indeed, Caine vowed never to return to South Africa while apartheid was still in force. Although hundreds of Zulus had worked on the film and appeared in it, because of apartheid they weren’t allowed to see it at all: Stanley Baker kept his promise, however, and arranged a secret special viewing for all those involved in the film.

The haunting film score by John Barry is covered in depth, too: he has written over 120 film scores and believes that music should be doing a very specific thing. He doesn’t want background music, he wants foreground music.

There were many special premieres throughout the country. At Glasgow five Scottish holders of the VC were accompanied by a guard of honour from HMS Zulu, a tribal class frigate due to be commissioned on the Clyde. In April 1967 I joined the ship’s company of HMS Zulu and we eventually sailed to Durban and visited Zululand and attended a tribal dance ceremony as guests of honour. (I left the ship in October 1969).

The film Zulu surpassed the previous highest grossing British release From Russia with Love. However, Bond came back to overtake that record with Goldfinger...

Zulu wasn’t glorying in warfare or jingoism or racism. It was simply a ‘straightforward celebration of valour, tenacity and honour among men’ from both sides. Many self-serving critics have tried to pillory the film-makers for not explaining the historical context or showing more from the Zulu viewpoint. They forget that the film was a drama about eleven men winning the Victoria Cross in one day.

There is a chapter about myths, gaffes and spoofs, even the Beyond Our Ken’s parody. There are appendices on the production schedule, the budget, the complete cast and crew listing, as well as a useful bibliography for further reading on the period and the Anglo-War of 1879 in particular. Some armies actually use the film as part of their training in leadership.

The book’s title is taken from a comment by Colour Sergeant Bourne near the end of the film, explaining their miraculous victory was not only due to the rifle but also the bayonet. ‘With some guts behind it, sir.’

The Zulu warcry is Bayete! - Thy will be done!