Victorian military history offers a range of texts, both fiction
and non-fiction, for use in English. Stories & Poetry Perhaps
one of the most famous Victorian poems is Tennyson's - somewhat
cheesey - Crimean War epic, Charge of the Light Brigade. Less
well known, and overshadowed by the war poetry of the First
World War, is Thomas Hardy's Drummer Hodge, set in the South
African War (1899 to 1902). Of course mention must be made of
Rudyard Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads, of which Tommy is a good
example. Considered patronising by some and with perhaps over-
theatrical, sanitised Cockney dialect, they do, though, capture
something of the Victorian soldier's life. As a journalist in
India and later, South Africa, Kipling had first-hand experience
of his subject. There is evidence that the real 'Tommy Atkins'
appreciated at least some of his verse. Stories with an 'Empire'
theme were popular in their day, but were largely of the Boys
Own Paper type and today would be considered racist and largely
unpalatable for