The enduring charm of King Solomon’s Mines

The Spectator ^ | 1/27/2025 | Alec Marsh

[BipolarBob]

I’ve seen different movie versions of this. I like them all in different ways.

[caddie]

Herbert Lom = Chief Inspector Dreyfus. LOL.

[Red Badger]

It was written at the same time as Huckleberry Finn, so it reflects the times it was set in..................

[ComputerGuy]

Kipling, Haggard and Doyle were my favorite authors as a boy.

[spankalib]

Haggard, of course, was also influential on generations of writers who followed him, including Ian Fleming, John Buchan and his creation Richard Hannay, and Graham Greene, who rated King Solomon’s Mines ‘a good deal higher than Treasure Island’.

I'd bet the farm that one other writer he influenced was Edgar Rice Burroughs.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Read the book over sixty years ago. Loved it! So I read all his books on Africa. SHE, Miawa’s Revenge, King Solomon’s Mines and Allan Quarterman. Also saw all the movies from the 1930s to the 1980s.
I prefer the 1930s and 1950s versions of the movies. Lots of other movies were made using stock footage from them. WATUSI comes to mind.

[Bookshelf]

KSMines with Kerr and Stewart Granger had some of the most notable African wildlife photography ever screened.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Thanks for posting this, Borges! I just downloaded the audio book to my Amazon Audible account on my iPhone. This looks like great listening on hikes, walks, car trips and plane rides (lots of them coming up soon!)

My eyesight is failing and it’s become very hard to read print books (so much for the big library I amassed to read in retirement 😢. Thank goodness for computers where I can make the print big! So audible books are a Godsend.

[NorthMountain]

It was written at the same time as Huckleberry Finn, so it reflects the times it was set in..................

And in many ways, both of them are damning indictments of the times we currently live in. I suspect that the author of this piece suffers from "Low-T" ...

[grey_whiskers]

“I know of nothing better than giraffe marrow, unless it is elephant’s heart, and we had that on the morrow.”

[BipolarBob]

That one’s my favorite. I have it on DVR.

[SunkenCiv]

I've never read the book, but have seen the movie, and it was a rambling crap pile, like all James Bond movies have been, IMHO. :^)

[chajin]

The Stewart Granger movie takes the novel and makes it more historically accurate, in the sense of who the “natives” in different places actually would have been and would have acted.

[redfreedom]

I’ve watched three versions. This one, a 1937 black and white version, and a 1950 version with Stewart Granger.

Steward Granger’s is by far the best. Granger’s is seemingly also the premium version, meaning in some streaming services it’s a pay per view.

[Chainmail]

You must have had a very sad youth.. From Russia with Love, Goldfinger - the Daniel Craig Bond movies? Now those are entertaining movies!

[ChildOfThe60s]

Read the book. Saw the movie(s)

Also read “She: A History of Adventure”. And saw both movies.

[BenLurkin]

Read it when quite young. Isn’t this the one where the old woman gets crushed beneath a stone portcullis?

[Lizavetta]

[grey_whiskers]

Yes.