Episode 49 They by Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling was the great poet of British Imperialism. He was born in 1865 in Mumbai (then Bombay) British India. He died in London, England in 1936 aged 70. He was named Rudyard because that was the place his parents had met and courted at Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire, England. Kipling was well-connected. HIs cousin was a conservative prime minister and two of his aunts were married to famous painters, one the great pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones He was immensely successful and you will have heard of The Jungle Book via Disney if nowhere else, but also his books Kim, Gunga Dinand his famous poems (at least to British schoolboys of my generation) Mandalay and I imagine the world-famous poem If is familiar to most peopl.e He actually won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. Henry James thought he was a literary genius.  Kipling has the ability to write wonderful prose that puts us right in the scene, whether that me the lush English countryside, dusty India or a grand old haunted house. It is worth saying also that Kipling also evidenced great affection for India and the Indians. He had a nanny or 'ayah' when he was small, but went back to England for his education. Interestling, after he finished at his military school, which he found a little rough, at the age of 17, it was decided he wasn't smart enough to go to Oxford University so he sailed back to India, where he became a journalist. To him, landing back in India was a home coming.  He published a collection of short stories set in British India in 1886; Plain Tales from the Hills, these had previously been released over a period of two years in a Lahore magazine.  He travelled back to England in 1889, via Rangoon, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and San Francisco. He travelled around the USA and Canada before going back to London, spending time in the Pacific North West at Portland, Seattle, British Columbia then going east via Alberta to the Yellowstone Nationa