Voices from the Zulu War

Voices from the Zulu War brings together first-hand accounts by British officers and soldiers who served in the campaign of 1879. Ian Knight supplies introductions and commentary that identify the writers, place their testimony within the chronology of the war and show how men at different levels of the army experienced campaigning in Zululand.

The accounts cover the invasion, Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift, Eshowe, Hlobane and Kambula, the renewed advance and the final stages of the war. Because the contributors wrote from individual positions and often with incomplete information, their testimony does not provide a single authoritative version of events. Knight’s editorial framework makes those differences useful evidence for how the campaign was understood by the men who fought it.