![]() ‘Rudyard’ was a middle name, after the lake in Staffordshire where his parents courted. Joseph Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865 and moved to England as a child. One room is finished in golden burnished leather wall coverings representing the tree of life. In the study are a beautiful set of the original Jungle Book paintings. I have never been in a more ‘English’ feeling home grand stone fireplaces, wood-panelled walls, rooms which are a contradictory amalgam of austere cosiness. ![]() Last week I visited Rudyard Kipling’s early 17th century house at Bateman’s in East Sussex, which is now a National Trust property. The knee-jerk reaction is that he’s a celebrator of British imperialism at its worst, so it’s easy to overlook the balancing facts. ![]() Remembered mainly for his children’s fables, ‘The Jungle Book’ and ‘Just So Stories’, Kipling developed an image problem that kept his adult work off the radar for sixty years (and for some, it still does). ![]() ‘I don’t know, I’ve never Kippled,’ replies the shopgirl.īut most people had, and they made him one of the most popular writers in England. €˜Do you like Kipling?’ asks the colonel on the 1930’s saucy seaside postcard. ![]()
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