Battle of Rorke's Drift - Depictions and Dramatisations

Depictions and Dramatisations

The events surrounding the assault on Rorke's Drift were first dramatised by military painters, notably Elizabeth Butler and Alphonse de Neuville. Their work was vastly popular in their day among the citizens of the British empire.

The 1964 film Zulu is a depiction of the Battle of Rorke's Drift. The film received generally positive reviews from the critics. Some details of the film's account have, however, been criticized as historically inaccurate (for example, in the movie the regiment is called the South Wales Borderers but the unit was not in fact called that until two years after the battle, even though the regiment had been based at Brecon in South Wales since 1873).

While most of the men of the 1st Battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot (1/24) were recruited from the industrial towns and agricultural classes of England, principally from Birmingham and adjacent southwest counties, only 10 soldiers of the 1/24 that fought in the battle were Welsh. Many of the soldiers of the junior battalion, the 2/24, were Welshmen. Of the 122 soldiers of the 24th Regiment present at the Battle of Rorke's Drift, 49 are known to have been of English nationality, 32 were Welsh, 16 were Irish, 1 was a Scot, and 3 were born overseas. The nationalities of the remaining 21 are unknown.

The battle of Rorke's Drift was given a chapter in military historian Victor Davis Hanson's book Carnage and Culture as one of several landmark battles demonstrating the superior effectiveness of Western military practices. In 1990 the game developer Impressions Games released a video game based on the historical battle. The battle was also featured by Mad Doc Software in its 2006 strategy game Empire Earth II: The Art of Supremacy as one of its "turning point" battle modes.