'Zulu - the Greatest Historical Novel that Never Was' by A L Berridge

Last month saw an important historical anniversary. 22nd January 2014 was celebrated with features on the BBC and in every national newspaper, and marked in special blogs and posts on internet sites worldwide. 

So what was it?

Strictly speaking it was the 135th anniversary of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift in the Zulu War – but that’s not what the fuss was about. What we were all celebrating was the fictionalized version of that battle, and the fiftieth anniversary of the release of a film called Zulu.

How can that be? Would we celebrate the anniversary of Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan over that of ‘D’ Day itself? How can any reproduction – film, novel, documentary, anything – ever be more significant than the events it reproduces?

Well, obviously it can. Few would have even heard of the historical King Arthur without the literature of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and no-one would remember Lisa del Giocondo if da Vinci hadn’t painted the Mona Lisa. We can all dream of achieving such heights, but I think we’d all agree the benchmark is set pretty high.

A high benchmark

Yet Zulu has hit it. An ordinary commercial war film with no special effects, no sex, and virtually no blood, yet article after article discusses both its significance and its enduring grip on the British imagination. Zulu has done what we’d all like to do, and for that alone I think any historical writer would want to study it.

Zulu Exhibition at Cardiff Castle

Many of us already have. Indeed, in the world of military fiction and re-enactment, familiarity with the film is an essential password to prove one is serious in one’s love of the genre.  My own first re-enactment ‘gig’ was set in the Thirty Years War, but the ice was only broken with my new comrades when I was able to answer correctly the simple question ‘Which Victoria Cross winner at Rorke’s Drift was actually Swiss?’

All right, that sounds alarmingly ‘cultish’, but there are good sound reasons for the fascination. The 1960s were a golden age for historical films (Cleopatra 1963, Lawrence of Arabia 1962, Doctor Zhivago 1965) but Zulu was the first of the ‘British military’ genre, and its success immediately prompted a scramble for more. The Charge of the Light Brigade, Cromwell and Waterloo all followed within six years, but none hit the spot in the same way. What’s special about Zulu goes beyond its qualities as a film, and I don’t think its successors are to be found in the cinema at all. In fact I think they’re here, in the world of historical fiction. 

Perhaps even literally. The action-adventure school of historical fiction has been around for years, but the more realistic military genre only really starts with George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman and takes off with Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe. And the idea for Flashman only came to GMF in 1966, two years after the release of a film he later praised highly in his ‘Hollywood History of the World’ – Zulu. 

He’s far from alone. I’m not aware of any significant writer in my genre who isn’t a fan, and down at the insignificant end I know how much it’s influenced my own writing. Yes, it’s a film, it’s a Hollywood epic, but I’d say it’s also historical fiction of the finest kind, and gave birth to the genre so many of us read and write today.

That’s why the piece of advice I give most often to aspiring historical writers is to study Zulu. I don’t mean as a film, as it’s usually done – but from the point of view of a writer. I know I’ve learned a lot from it myself and think even some of its most obvious lessons are worth restating.

Take the battle itself, for instance. It’s from Zulu that I learned the most important part of writing battles is the tension of the build-up – something the film does so successfully that Peter Jackson claimed it inspired the Helm’s Deep sequences in his ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. It’s from Zulu that I learned to sustain long action sequences by dividing them into individual little ‘chapters’, each with their own defining moments. It’s from Zulu that I learned action means nothing unless we’ve already been given characters to care about. All obvious stuff, but how often do we read books or see films that don’t seem to know it?

Build up is all...

Or the world-building. True, a modern writer wouldn’t get away with that long opening sequence of Zulu dances, but once the action moves to Rorke’s Drift we are absorbed so quickly into the equally alien world of the Victorian military that we’re hardly even aware it’s being done. Since I’ve been studying Crimea I’m amazed at the authenticity of detail that’s so casually included here – from the overt Christianity of some British soldiers to the subtle rivalry between ‘regular’ Army and Engineers. Zulu is an object lesson in how to be accurate without letting your research show.

Or the language. That too is both natural and totally authentic – a wonderful anecdote to those who think Victorians all spoke formally, correctly and without contractions. Even the idioms are right, from ‘the fuzzies’ to ‘oh, my eye’, and every single character has his own unique voice. In the whole film there’s only one phrase I’m unsure about (Hook’s “Stuff me with little green apples”) and one line I think sounds unnatural – Bromhead’s comment “That’s a bitter pill” on being shot at with their own rifles.

Or the relationships! The totally egregious character of Miss Witt is there only to add misleading sex interest to the truly appalling trailer, but there are three strong character relationships within the defenders, any one of which could sustain a novel all its own. The breaking down of the class rivalry between Chard and Bromhead, the almost paternal love-hate bond between the dying Sergeant Maxfield and the recalcitrant Private Hook, and its simple echo in the journey travelled by Corporal Allen and Private Hitch. When Allen and Hitch are wounded, Hitch asks the martinet corporal if he can now undo his tunic button - and the corporal reaches to do it with his own hand...

Wounded Corporal Allen and Private Hitch

Kerry Jordan as the cook

Or even just the humanity. The most obvious example is the proper respect shown to the Zulus (‘I think they’ve got more guts than we have, boyo!’) but I love the way we’re given insight into so many different little characters – such as the cook who’s laboured under the hot sun to make soup for a hundred men, and is then ordered to throw it on the fire. Zulu taught me what can be done with minor characters, and I try to remember it every time.

Stanley Baker as Chard

Not everything works, but I think we can learn from the flaws too. The character of Chard, for instance, does sometimes slip into modern attitudes – being anti-war, anti-colonialism, and sympathetic to the plight of the Boers – and every time he does it the film seems to ‘jolt’. It doesn’t ‘feel’ right, and a viewer will know that even if he’s never thought about historical fiction.

Then there are the ‘liberties taken with the truth’. The most obvious ones are making the Zulus salute the British as ‘fellow braves’ (which they didn’t), and the 24th (Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot a mainly Welsh regiment (when it wasn’t) – but there’s still a dramatic truth in both these things and at least they do no harm. Besides, take the Welshness away and we lose not only one of the best scenes of the film, but one that's been described as one of the greatest cinematic scenes of all time. 'Men of Harlech' has never been the same since.

What I do mind are the ‘liberties’ taken with real people, and I learned an important lesson when the descendants of Henry Hook VC complained about the appallingly unfair depiction of his character in the film. People do care when their ancestors are smeared, and I saw it again when the descendants of Murdoch complained about the way he was portrayed in Titanic.  There is simply no excuse for this. If we need a villain and there wasn’t one – then are we really incapable of making one up?

James Booth as Hook                             The real Hook

There’s one other real person I mind about – but you won’t see him in the film at all. His name was Private Joseph Williams of the 24th Regiment of Foot, and he actually performed the single most heroic action of the entire battle. When the Zulus began to spear their way through the outer door to the hospital, Joseph Williams left his loophole to brace the planks with his own body, and held  the entrance alone while patients were carried to safety behind him. He was killed and cut to pieces, but if the VC had been awarded posthumously he would most certainly have ben qualified to receive it. It saddens me that Zulu didn’t recognize him either.

But in the end it’s a film, and its job is ultimately to entertain. Few would disagree that it does that, but it’s in the way it does it that I think I can learn most as a historical novelist. Yes, world-building is important, and yes, historical context is crucial, but arguably the greatest aspect of Zulu is the way it can sweep away both. War is universal. When Hook says 'Did I ever see a Zulu walking down the City Road? No! So what am I doing here?' he may be making a historically relevant point about colonialism, but he is also speaking for almost any soldier in any foreign war.

As does Colour Sergeant Bourne in one of the most crucial scenes of the film. Nervous young Private Cole asks him, ‘Why is it us, sir? Why us?’ to which Bourne replies, ‘Because we’re here, lad. Nobody else. Just us.’

Gary Bond as Cole

And that’s it. A soldier doesn’t need to know the rights or wrongs of the war he’s fighting – and neither ultimately does a reader. In the end there are only men we care about who must fight to survive. Not 1879, not history, but this moment, here and now.

That for me is the biggest lesson of Zulu. I’ll spend forever getting my research right and weaving my story in and out of specific and real events, but the best kind of historical novel is one where you can throw away the history – and still have a story.

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A.L. Berridge's website is here, and is nowhere near as good as watching Zulu. Have a look at the scene above instead. 

And the answer to the question is (of course) Frederick Schiess of the Natal Native Contingent, from the Swiss Mounted Police.