DeBigC

Factual error: Of the four significant Irish characters at this battle Coghill who dies defending the flag. Other characters have reference to their Irishness or their accent, but Coghill is played as if he was English by Christopher Cazenove.

DeBigC

Factual error: Harry goes to the synagogue, to go through a register his grandfather's records. But he is holding the Talmud and not a register, which is entirely and Hebrew, and he's looking at it upside down. (01:05:00 - 01:06:00)

DeBigC

Factual error: Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony William Durnford is played by Burt Lancaster with a thick Irish brogue. In fact, it is unlikely that Durnford spoke this way as he was educated in England, lived part of his life in Germany, and served as Royal Engineer in several British colonies.

DeBigC

Factual error: The film seems - through dialogue from the soldiers and the preacher - to suggest that the Zulus were the aggressors ("savages") in this in the actual Anglo Zulu war. In fact the British had crossed illegally into Zululand to provoke a war. The crossing point of the Buffalo river into the Zulu kingdom was Rorke's Drift - and so the Zulu attack on it was not from savage whimsy, but came from a Zulu contingent eager to see action as they were reserves at Isandlwana.

DeBigC