My late husband wrote the Zulu script and he was no racist
AS THE widow of John Prebble, who co-wrote the script for the 1964 film Zulu, I was appalled to read of the bid to ban the film on the grounds that is has ‘racist overtones’. While he would have readily put his hands up to a certain amount of artistic licence, which may account for the ‘inaccuracies’ which the good folk of Folkestone mention, my husband would have been appalled to have been accused of racialism. It bodes ill for historians of the future if such stories of bravery cannot be told, and the organisers of the Silver Screen Cinema event are to be congratulated for going ahead with its showing on Saturday in aid of an Armed Forces charity
JAN PREBBLE, london sw1.
HOW depressing to read that a group of misguided people saw fit to condemn the brilliant film Zulu, based on the 1879 Battle of Rorke’s Drift, as racist, while failing to express any views on the equally excellent Zulu Dawn. The latter film is also factual and portrays the 1879 Battle of Isandlwana in which 20,000 Zulus attacked and killed 1,300 British soldiers. Presumably the publicity-seeking protesters think it acceptable to ignore that massacre as it runs counter to the point they are trying to make.
PETER WARRILOW, lincoln.
THE age for watching films depicting sexual violence may be raised to 18 (Mail). In 1952, I plucked up the courage to see my first ‘X-rated film. The suspicious woman at the box office
asked my age, to which I replied: ‘Sixteen.’ She allowed me in. The film? A Streetcar Named Desire, which is now seen as a classic even though it contains a rape scene.
C. D. ALLAN, stoke-on-Trent.
IN FOLKESTONE, two dozen killjoys called for a showing of Zulu, one of the best films to come out of the Sixties, to be banned on the ridiculous grounds it is racist. In our universities, certain speakers have been banned because their opinions are viewed as too controversial. The liberal fascists are on the march. Having watched the film Fahrenheit 451, in which all books are burned, I fear we might be in danger of this dystopian world becoming a reality.
ALAN WRIGHT, st Bees, cumbria.