Kipling, Rudyard

Kipling, Rudyard (1865–1936). Kipling is often thought of primarily as the trumpet of empire, but his writings were more varied than that suggests and he was far from triumphalist in tone. Kipling was born in Bombay, where his father had a chair in architecture. His first name is derived from Rudyard Lake, near Leek (Staffs.), where his parents had met. After United Services College in Devon, he returned to India as a journalist and rapidly acquired a reputation. At 24 he settled in London. Life's Handicap (1891) launched him as a London figure and he followed with The Jungle Book (1894/5). His poem ‘Recessional’ for the Diamond Jubilee of 1897—‘lest we forget’—made him a national figure. Stalky and Co. (1899) drew on his schooldays and Kim (1901) on India. He published the Just‐So Stories, one of the few children's books that children enjoy, in 1902 when he moved into Bateman's in Sussex, and Puck of Pook's Hill, set in the post‐Roman period, in 1906. Kipling declined national honours but was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1907. His only son was killed in the Great War in 1915.