Do we need another hero? Year 8 get to grips with the heroic myth of the Defence of Rorke's Drift in 1879

Mike Murray shares a lesson sequence in which his students examined changing interpretations of the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879. Building on earlier work on teaching interpretations across an extended chronological period and the work of Wheeley et al on Rorke's Drift in particular, Murray develops new emphases, fresh ways in to the puzzle and a different journey. Murray elaborates his argument for teaching interpretations by linking it to the ways in which all history remains alive, contested and ever-changing in its meanings. He shows how he gets his students to discern these meanings whether they surface in popular, aesthetic or scholarly expression...