Cecil Rhodes - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

• Mark Twain's sarcastic summation of Rhodes ("I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake"), from Chapter LXIX of Following the Equator, still often appears in collections of famous insults. His account of how "Cecil Rhodes" made his first fortune by discovering, in Australia, in the belly of a shark, a newspaper that gave him advance knowledge of a great rise in wool prices, is completely fictional – Twain dates the event at 1870, when Rhodes was in South Africa – yet is occasionally accepted as true (see a posting on Yahoo Answers at http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080407061220AAi5ap3 (retrieved 22 May 2011)).

• The will of Cecil Rhodes is the central theme in the science fiction book Great Work of Time by John Crowley, an alternate history in which the Secret Society stipulated in the will was indeed established. Its members eventually achieve the secret of time travel and use it to restrain World War I and prevent World War II, and to perpetuate the world ascendancy of the British Empire up to the end of the Twentieth Century. The book contains a vivid description of Cecil Rhodes himself, seen through the eyes of a traveller from the future British Empire.

• In the British film Rhodes of Africa (1936, directed by Austrian filmmaker Berthold Viertel), Rhodes was portrayed by Canadian actor Walter Huston.

• In 1996, BBC-TV made an eight-part television drama about Rhodes called Rhodes: The Life and Legend of Cecil Rhodes. It was produced by David Drury and written by Antony Thomas. It tells the story of Rhodes' life through a series of flashbacks of conversations between him and Princess Catherine Radziwill and also between her and people who knew him. It also shows the story of how she stalked and eventually ruined him. In the serial, Cecil Rhodes is played by Martin Shaw, the younger Cecil Rhodes is played by his son Joe Shaw, and Princess Radziwill is played by Frances Barber. In the serial Rhodes is portrayed as ruthless and greedy. The serial also suggests that he was homosexual.

• The Wilbur Smith "Ballantyne" series of novels feature Rhodes. These novels also strongly suggest that he was homosexual.

• In 1901, Rhodes bought Dalham Hall, Suffolk. In 1902 Colonel Francis William Rhodes erected the village hall in the village of Dalham, to commemorate the life of his brother, who had died before taking possession of the estate.

• Rhodes was a peripheral but influential character in the historical novel The Covenant by James A. Michener.

• His memorial at Devil's Peak also served as a temple in The Adventures of Sinbad episode The Return of the Ronin.