The Zulu And The Lion — James Wilson

Fiction(?): Gonville Bromhead was a young, dashing, and handsome junior officer who oozed courage from every pore, just as he was portrayed by Michael Caine in the classic film Zulu. Fact(?): Bromhead was an unattractive, and almost completely deaf, man who was considered a poor excuse for an officer by his peers. While there is no doubting his personal bravery, his organisational skills were so poor that he even managed to miss his own Victoria Cross ceremony. So our perception of historical events is moulded by the interpretations of others, and their interpretations are based, at least in part, on the factual, recorded information available about the events in question. But it has to be accepted that the further we travel back in time, the less hard evidence there is. So supposition and hypothesis has to be injected into any historical account and it is far too easy, far too comforting for the modern reader or viewer, to accept as fact the conjecture of others. The Zulu and the Lion dares to question the commonly held beliefs about one of the blackest periods in British history, which was punctuated by one of the most humiliating military defeats ever inflicted on the British army. In the story two men from different sides of the conflict are thrown together in a desperate race to avoid an even worse human tragedy being inflicted. It is time to take a fresh look at our past.