ABSTRACT
The scene is familiar to many. On the morning of 23 January 1879, Colour Sergeant Bourne reports to Lieutenant Chard that the Zulu have disappeared from Rorke’s Drift: ‘It’s a miracle’, Chard replies. ‘If it’s a miracle, Colour Sergeant, it’s a short-chamber Boxer-Henry point four-five calibre miracle.’ The rejoinder, ‘And a bayonet, Sir, with some guts behind it.’ The exchange comes, of course, from the screenplay for the 1964 film, Zulu, starring Stanley Baker as Chard and Michael Caine as Lieutenant Bromhead. 1 Zulu has consistently ranked high in polls of Britain’s favourite films. It was placed eighteenth – the second highest ranked British film – by the 60,000 subscribers of Sky’s ‘Millenium Movies’ poll in 2000, and eighth by website users for Channel Four’s ‘100 Greatest War Movies’ in 2005. It was also the most popular film of all among Conservative MPs polled in 2004. 2 Zulu also inspired a popular publishing boom that has continued unabated for almost 50 years. A casual survey suggests that, since 2000 alone, Rorke’s Drift and Isandlwana that immediately preceded it have resulted in the publication of at least a dozen titles, including one by this author. 3
