Editing Cecil Rhodes (section)

== Popular culture ==
* [[Mark Twain]]'s sarcastic summation of Rhodes ("I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake"), from Chapter LXIX of ''[[Following the Equator]]'', still often appears in collections of famous insults.{{sfn|Twain|1898}}{{efn|His account of how "Cecil Rhodes" made his first fortune by discovering, in Australia, in the belly of a shark, a newspaper that gave him advance knowledge of a great rise in wool prices, is completely fictional—Twain dates the event at 1870, when Rhodes was in South Africa.}}
* He is depicted, along with other Cape notables, in the 1899 artwork [[Holiday Time in Cape Town in the Twentieth Century, in Honour of the Expected Arrival of a Governor-General of UNITED South Africa|Holiday Time in Cape Town]] by James Ford''.''
* The will of Cecil Rhodes is the central theme in the science fiction book ''[[Great Work of Time]]'' by [[John Crowley (author)|John Crowley]], an alternative history in which the Secret Society stipulated in the will was indeed established. Its members eventually achieve the secret of time travel and use it to restrain World War I and prevent World War II, and to perpetuate the world ascendancy of the British Empire up to the end of the twentieth century. The book contains a vivid description of Cecil Rhodes himself, seen through the eyes of a traveller from the future British Empire.
* In the British film ''[[Rhodes of Africa]]'' (1936, directed by Austrian filmmaker [[Berthold Viertel]]), Rhodes was portrayed by Canadian actor [[Walter Huston]].<ref>[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028176/ ''Rhodes of Africa'' (1936)].</ref>
*Rhodes is the unofficial mascot of [[Uncomfortable Oxford]], an Oxford-based tour guide and history organisation which focuses on British imperial history. Much of their promotional material, tours and speeches all focus on Rhodes's statue outside of [[Oriel College, Oxford]], and they were central to organising the 2020 Oxford [[George Floyd protests|Black Lives Matter protests]] following the [[murder of George Floyd]].<ref>{{Cite news|last=Gregory|first=Andy|date=9 June 2020|title=Cecil Rhodes protest – live: Oxford students demand removal of colonialist's statue, as Labour councils to review public monuments|work=Independent|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cecil-rhodes-protest-live-oxford-university-today-black-lives-matter-demonstration-a9557466.html|access-date=22 December 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|last=Goldsbrough|first=Susannah|date=19 June 2020|title=Uncomfortable Oxford: meet the student group asking the city to confront its colonial past|work=The Telegraph|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/architecture/uncomfortable-oxford-meet-student-group-asking-city-confront/ |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220111/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/architecture/uncomfortable-oxford-meet-student-group-asking-city-confront/ |archive-date=11 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|access-date=22 December 2020}}{{cbignore}}</ref>
* Rhodes was played by [[Ferdinand Marian (actor)|Ferdinand Marian]] in the Nazi film ''[[Ohm Krüger]]'' (1941), where he—like all other British characters in the film—was presented as an outright villain.
* In 1901, Rhodes bought [[Dalham Hall]], Suffolk. In 1902, Colonel [[Frank Rhodes (British Army officer)|Frank Rhodes]] erected the village hall in the village of [[Dalham]], near [[Bury St Edmunds]], to commemorate the life of his brother, who had died before taking possession of the estate.
* Rhodes was a peripheral but influential character in the historical novel ''[[The Covenant (novel)|The Covenant]]'' by [[James Michener]].
* His memorial at Devil's Peak also served as a temple in ''[[The Adventures of Sinbad]]'' episode "The Return of the Ronin".
* The 1976 [[Hugh Masekela]] album ''[[Colonial Man]]'' has a song titled "Cecil Rhodes".
* Cecil Rhodes was the subject of a South African television mini-series, ''[[Barney Barnato (TV Series)|Barney Barnato]]'', made in 1989 and first aired on [[SABC]] in early 1990.
* In 1996, BBC-TV made an eight-part television drama about Rhodes called ''[[Rhodes (TV series)|Rhodes: The Life and Legend of Cecil Rhodes]]''.<ref>[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115335/ "Rhodes" on IMDB]</ref> It was produced by David Drury and written by Antony Thomas. It tells the story of Rhodes' life through a series of flashbacks of conversations between him and Princess Catherine Radziwiłł and also between her and people who knew him. It also shows the story of how she stalked and eventually ruined him. In the serial, Cecil Rhodes is played by [[Martin Shaw]], the younger Cecil Rhodes is played by his son Joe Shaw, and Princess Radziwiłł is played by [[Frances Barber]]. In the serial Rhodes is portrayed as ruthless and greedy. The serial also suggests that he was homosexual.{{sfn|Godwin|1998}} Countering the implication of Rhodes' homosexuality, historian and journalist [[Paul Johnson (writer)|Paul Johnson]] wrote that Rhodes had been falsely smeared by the programme, commenting: "In nine tendentious hours, Rhodes is to be presented as a corrupt and greedy money-grabber, a racist and paedophile, whose disgusting passion was to get his hands on young boys ... the BBC has spent £10m of our money putting together a farrago of exaggerations and smears about this great man." [[Peter Godwin]] said of the film that "it feels like a work overwhelmingly informed by malice, consistently seizing on the very worst interpretation of the man without really attempting to get under his skin. Rhodes was no 19th-century Hitler. He wasn't so much a freak as a man of his time."
*Rhodes features prominently in [[Wilbur Smith]]'s ''Ballantyne'' series of novels, fictional stories based amongst real events in Rhodes' lifetime.
* [[Scientology]] founder [[L. Ron Hubbard]] (''b.'' 1911) believed himself to be the literal reincarnation of Cecil Rhodes.<ref>[[Russell Miller]], ''Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard'' (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1987), [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/miller/bfm15.htm Ch. 15] 257–259.</ref>{{Unreliable source?|date=December 2023}}
* Season 4, Episode 1 of the [[Bad Gays (podcast)|Bad Gays Podcast]] covers Rhodes' life.<ref>{{Cite web |date=October 20, 2020 |title=S4E1: Cecil Rhodes |url=https://badgayspod.com/episode-archive/s4-cecil-rhodes |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230608161636/https://badgayspod.com/episode-archive/s4-cecil-rhodes |archive-date=June 8, 2023 |access-date=August 4, 2024 |website=Bad Gays Podcast}}</ref>