A study of human remains from two cemeteries in Bulgaria, all buried with distinctively ‘Gothic’ jewellery, brooches, and belt buckles, suggests that the ancient Goths were ethnically diverse and not a single homogeneous community.
Analysis of quartz arrowheads from South Africa reveals that they may represent the earliest use of poison arrows in hunting. Researchers from Sweden and South Africa carried out gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis of ten microliths discovered in the Umhlatuzana…
The winner of MHM’s 2025 Book of the Year award on redcoats, distant battlefields, and the film that started it all.
Chris Peers, author of a new minute-by-minute study of the fighting on 22 January 1879, analyses the extraordinary endurance of the mission-station garrison.
The Defence of Rorke's Drift remains one of the most celebrated engagements in UK military history. On the night of 22 January 1879, a force of just over 150 British and colonial troops held off an estimated 3-4,000 Zulu warriors during more than 12 hours of bitter, hand-to-hand fighting that would result in the award of 11 Victoria Crosses.
Taylor Downing reviews the classic war film Zulu Dawn.
Reviewing the Rorke's Drift Museum, with Taylor Downing.
Taylor Downing reviews the classic war film Zulu.
Weapon specifications Most African tribes use a form of assegai, a light throwing-spear used in both hunting and war, typically around 6-feet long with a 6-inch steel head. Some of the most aggressive Bantu tribes of southern Africa have developed…
MHM Editor Neil Faulkner recalls a classic charge of British cavalry on a late 19th-century battlefield.
‘I can’t understand it!’ That was British commander Lord Chelmsford’s response. Isandlwana was perhaps the greatest defeat inflicted on British redcoats by native warriors in imperial history. Zulu War expert Ian Knight, who has published a major new study, tackles the key question: what went wrong for the British at Isandlwana?