Book excerpt: First published in 1948, renowned British Empire historian Coupland describes, with swift and vivid strokes, the situation between whites and blacks, the great military qualities and terrifying military tactics of the Zulu warriors and the characters of the Englishmen, soldiers and politicians, involved in the disaster. Having prepared the reader with consummate art and scholarship, he then sets the great action in that strange, eerie land, until the reader can truly feel that he has lived through it himself. The aftermath brings him to Rorke’s Drift and the gallant British stand that averted irretrievable disaster. A first-rate account of the battle.