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The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling
"Readable and reliable . . . [Gilmour's] assessment of the political background of Kipling's writings is exemplary." —Earl L. Dachslager, Houston Chronicle
David Gilmour's superbly nuanced biography of Rudyard Kipling, now available in paperback, is the first to show how the great writer's life and work mirrored the trajectory of the British Empire, from its zenith to its final decades. His great poem "Recessional" celebrated Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and his last poems warned of the dangers of Nazism, while Kipling himself, an icon of the empire, was transformed from an apostle of success to a prophet of national decline. As Gilmour makes clear, Kipling's mysterious and enduring works deeply influenced the way his readers saw both themselves and the British Empire, and they continue to challenge our own generation.
David Gilmour's superbly nuanced biography of Rudyard Kipling, now available in paperback, is the first to show how the great writer's life and work mirrored the trajectory of the British Empire, from its zenith to its final decades. His great poem "Recessional" celebrated Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and his last poems warned of the dangers of Nazism, while Kipling himself, an icon of the empire, was transformed from an apostle of success to a prophet of national decline. As Gilmour makes clear, Kipling's mysterious and enduring works deeply influenced the way his readers saw both themselves and the British Empire, and they continue to challenge our own generation.
351 pages, Paperback
First published March 7, 2002
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About the author
David Gilmour
15 books34 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Sir David Robert Gilmour, 4th Baronet is a Scottish author. He is the first son of Ian Gilmour, Baron Gilmour of Craigmillar, 3rd Baronet, and Lady Caroline Margaret Montagu-Douglas-Scott, the youngest daughter of the 8th Duke of Buccleuch. HRH Princess Margaret was his sponsor at his Christening. He became the 4th baronet on the death of his father in 2007.
Gilmour was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford.
Gilmour is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL).
He lives in Edinburgh with his wife and four children.
Sir David Robert Gilmour, 4th Baronet is a Scottish author. He is the first son of Ian Gilmour, Baron Gilmour of Craigmillar, 3rd Baronet, and Lady Caroline Margaret Montagu-Douglas-Scott, the youngest daughter of the 8th Duke of Buccleuch. HRH Princess Margaret was his sponsor at his Christening. He became the 4th baronet on the death of his father in 2007.
Gilmour was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford.
Gilmour is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL).
He lives in Edinburgh with his wife and four children.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 7, 2016
Rudyard Kipling, when remembered today, is usually snidely dismissed as a jingoistic Victorian, or as the writer of certain children’s books. “The Long Recessional” provides the modern reader with a concise biography of the multi-faceted Kipling, showing him as, if not a man for all seasons, surely a man for his time.
David Gilmour is also the author of an excellent biography of George Nathaniel Curzon, sometime Viceroy of India, and a contemporary of Kipling’s. Kipling was born in India and in the public mind is associated very much with India, but although he spent his formative years there, he did not visit India for most of the rest of his life. He remained very interested in what happened in India, but he focused in his adult life more broadly on the British Empire (he also spent time in America, memorably characterizing New York as “the shiftless outcome of squalid barbarism and reckless extravagance”). He also focused on the British working and middle classes, for whom he had great sympathy and empathy, and among whom he also spent much of his youth. And, over the years, his focus shifted from the Empire in its glory to the Empire in its decline, of which he was the prophet, and to the deep and abiding sorrow of the War (in which his son was killed). So Kipling was, again contrary to popular myth, a broad-minded man with the common touch—it was the elites who disliked him, not the normal Englishman. And, for that matter, it’s the elites who dislike him now.
As to India, and the Empire generally, Kipling was perhaps the exemplar of the “service model” of the Empire. Nowadays, the common view is that the Empire was purely about economic benefit (as in Sven Beckert’s puerile “Empire Of Cotton”), or about imperialism more generally, both Marxist-derived analyses. The reality is much different—a very significant fraction of Englishmen viewed England’s role as service, to the “lesser peoples,” and a very significant fraction thought the Empire was a bad idea (for a variety of reasons). Gilmour summarizes Kipling’s view as “The British were now in India for a moral purpose, for the good of the native inhabitants, whom it was their duty to lead through example to a safer and more prosperous future.” This, not racism, is the message of “The White Man’s Burden,” and Englishmen died in their thousands to bring it to the Indians. Kipling’s talents were used in service of this ideal, and whatever one may say about the ideal, it is an undeniable truth that the British succeeded. Who can doubt that India is both safer and more prosperous now as a result of colonialism than it would have been had the British never ruled? Only the ignorant and the politically blinkered.
Gilmour draws sharp portraits of the idiosyncrasies of the members of the English ruling class, such as the Admiral of the Channel Fleet until 1909, Lord Charles Beresford. His daily greeting was “Good morning, one day nearer the German war.” The writing is fluid and the biography is not over-long, considering the complexity of the subject. One oddity is that the beginning of the book is full of descriptions of Kipling’s relationship with his parents and his sister, which family unit they called the “Family Square.” His parents are mentioned intermittently throughout the book, and his sister is noted as having suffered a mental decline. But there is no mention at all of the deaths of Kipling’s parents—the book does not say when they died, or what effect that had on Kipling. This seems like a significant omission, for their death must have affected Kipling. Doubtless not as much as the deaths of two of his three children, but his parents were a formative influence, and their deaths must have mattered.
While Gilmour’s focus is largely on Kipling’s political views, and how those developed over time, naturally his voluminous writings provide the frame for any discussion of Kipling. These include famous writings: “Kim, “Recessional,” “If.” But they also include lesser known gems, some of which are very powerful, like “Gethsemane”:
The Garden called Gethsemane
In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
The English soldiers pass.
We used to pass—we used to pass
Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
Beyond Gethsemane.
The Garden called Gethsemane,
It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
I prayed my cup might pass.
The officer sat on the chair,
The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
I prayed my cup might pass.
It didn’t pass—it didn’t pass—
It didn’t pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
Beyond Gethsemane!
And there are powerful political poems, still powerful despite the conflicts that inspired them having faded into gray obscurity. The best example of this is “Gehazi,” tied to a political corruption scandal. The poem revolves around an analogy to Naaman, the leper cured by the prophet Elisha, whose servant Gehazi then tried to extort money from Naaman, and was himself turned into a leper. You have to read the whole poem to appreciate it:
“Whence comest thou, Gehazi,
So reverend to behold,
In scarlet and in ermines
And chain of England’s gold?”
“From following after Naaman
To tell him all is well,
Whereby my zeal hath made me
A Judge in Israel.”
Well done, well done, Gehazi!
Stretch forth thy ready hand,
Thou barely ’scaped from judgment,
Take oath to judge the land
Unswayed by gift of money
Or privy bribe, more base,
Of knowledge which is profit
In any market-place.
Search out and probe, Gehazi,
As thou of all canst try,
The truthful, well-weighed answer
That tells the blacker lie—
The loud, uneasy virtue
The anger feigned at will,
To overbear a witness
And make the Court keep still.
Take order now, Gehazi,
That no man talk aside
In secret with his judges
The while his case is tried.
Lest he should show them—reason
To keep a matter hid,
And subtly lead the questions
Away from what he did.
Thou mirror of uprightness,
What ails thee at thy vows?
What means the risen whiteness
Of the skin between thy brows?
The boils that shine and burrow,
The sores that slough and bleed—
The leprosy of Naaman
On thee and all thy seed?
Stand up, stand up, Gehazi,
Draw close thy robe and go,
Gehazi, Judge in Israel,
A leper white as snow!
Unfortunately, as can be seen from these two examples, many of Kipling’s poems depend for understanding on deep familiarity with both the Old and New Testaments, so even now they are probably incomprehensible to many, and in a few decades in the post-Christian West, only experts will be able to grasp the metaphors. This is hardly Kipling’s fault, though; it is ours.
Kipling seems to have been a difficult man. While he always empathized with the common man (unlike the “Decadents,” such as Oscar Wilde, who viewed the common man with contempt), he grew away from immersing himself in popular culture over time. And in his upper class milieu, he viewed most relationships through a political prism, and he was very good at hating others and accumulating enemies. This seems like it would have been exhausting, but it worked for him.
Kipling was also a pessimist throughout his life. As Gilmour says, “Pessimists and reactionaries make the best prophets because they are without illusions, because they can see behind as well as beyond contemporary viewpoints. . . . . Prophets, as the Old Testament reveals, say unpalatable things and say them in provocative and unpleasant language. So did Kipling. . . . . But there was an excuse for his bitterness, as there was with Jeremiah—he KNEW what was going to happen.” Kipling predicted various bad things—the disappearance of Empire; that the Boers would impose apartheid if the English let them run South Africa; that the Kaiser would bring about a war; that if England left India there would be carnage between Hindu and Muslim; and much more. But he was always proven right, even after his death, as with the military resurgence of Germany. He would have agreed with Winston Churchill, whom he loathed as a “political whore,” that “the Hun is always either at your throat or your feet” (although now, courtesy of Angela Merkel, the Hun has prostrated itself voluntarily to a new enemy, whom it has welcomed in their migrant millions---something of which Kipling would doubtless have clearly seen the results). We could use Kipling’s pessimism, to counteract the combination of Pollyanna and ostrich that characterizes the political whores of today, such as Merkel.
And, most importantly, as Gilmour again says, “The spirit of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain owed much to Kipling.” Of course, that spirit is long gone, in an enervated England ruled by faithless globalist elites. Most likely it can never be restored, despite the good sense of the slight majority of Britain’s inhabitants recently voting to exit the EU and restore some small measure of British sovereignty. But that’s a long cry from the spirit of World War II, which was itself a long cry from the spirit of 1890. The breath of Empire, once gone, does not return, but perhaps an appreciation of the virtues of Kipling, and some hard choices and hard deeds, could restore England to once again be an example for the world.
David Gilmour is also the author of an excellent biography of George Nathaniel Curzon, sometime Viceroy of India, and a contemporary of Kipling’s. Kipling was born in India and in the public mind is associated very much with India, but although he spent his formative years there, he did not visit India for most of the rest of his life. He remained very interested in what happened in India, but he focused in his adult life more broadly on the British Empire (he also spent time in America, memorably characterizing New York as “the shiftless outcome of squalid barbarism and reckless extravagance”). He also focused on the British working and middle classes, for whom he had great sympathy and empathy, and among whom he also spent much of his youth. And, over the years, his focus shifted from the Empire in its glory to the Empire in its decline, of which he was the prophet, and to the deep and abiding sorrow of the War (in which his son was killed). So Kipling was, again contrary to popular myth, a broad-minded man with the common touch—it was the elites who disliked him, not the normal Englishman. And, for that matter, it’s the elites who dislike him now.
As to India, and the Empire generally, Kipling was perhaps the exemplar of the “service model” of the Empire. Nowadays, the common view is that the Empire was purely about economic benefit (as in Sven Beckert’s puerile “Empire Of Cotton”), or about imperialism more generally, both Marxist-derived analyses. The reality is much different—a very significant fraction of Englishmen viewed England’s role as service, to the “lesser peoples,” and a very significant fraction thought the Empire was a bad idea (for a variety of reasons). Gilmour summarizes Kipling’s view as “The British were now in India for a moral purpose, for the good of the native inhabitants, whom it was their duty to lead through example to a safer and more prosperous future.” This, not racism, is the message of “The White Man’s Burden,” and Englishmen died in their thousands to bring it to the Indians. Kipling’s talents were used in service of this ideal, and whatever one may say about the ideal, it is an undeniable truth that the British succeeded. Who can doubt that India is both safer and more prosperous now as a result of colonialism than it would have been had the British never ruled? Only the ignorant and the politically blinkered.
Gilmour draws sharp portraits of the idiosyncrasies of the members of the English ruling class, such as the Admiral of the Channel Fleet until 1909, Lord Charles Beresford. His daily greeting was “Good morning, one day nearer the German war.” The writing is fluid and the biography is not over-long, considering the complexity of the subject. One oddity is that the beginning of the book is full of descriptions of Kipling’s relationship with his parents and his sister, which family unit they called the “Family Square.” His parents are mentioned intermittently throughout the book, and his sister is noted as having suffered a mental decline. But there is no mention at all of the deaths of Kipling’s parents—the book does not say when they died, or what effect that had on Kipling. This seems like a significant omission, for their death must have affected Kipling. Doubtless not as much as the deaths of two of his three children, but his parents were a formative influence, and their deaths must have mattered.
While Gilmour’s focus is largely on Kipling’s political views, and how those developed over time, naturally his voluminous writings provide the frame for any discussion of Kipling. These include famous writings: “Kim, “Recessional,” “If.” But they also include lesser known gems, some of which are very powerful, like “Gethsemane”:
The Garden called Gethsemane
In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
The English soldiers pass.
We used to pass—we used to pass
Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
Beyond Gethsemane.
The Garden called Gethsemane,
It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
I prayed my cup might pass.
The officer sat on the chair,
The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
I prayed my cup might pass.
It didn’t pass—it didn’t pass—
It didn’t pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
Beyond Gethsemane!
And there are powerful political poems, still powerful despite the conflicts that inspired them having faded into gray obscurity. The best example of this is “Gehazi,” tied to a political corruption scandal. The poem revolves around an analogy to Naaman, the leper cured by the prophet Elisha, whose servant Gehazi then tried to extort money from Naaman, and was himself turned into a leper. You have to read the whole poem to appreciate it:
“Whence comest thou, Gehazi,
So reverend to behold,
In scarlet and in ermines
And chain of England’s gold?”
“From following after Naaman
To tell him all is well,
Whereby my zeal hath made me
A Judge in Israel.”
Well done, well done, Gehazi!
Stretch forth thy ready hand,
Thou barely ’scaped from judgment,
Take oath to judge the land
Unswayed by gift of money
Or privy bribe, more base,
Of knowledge which is profit
In any market-place.
Search out and probe, Gehazi,
As thou of all canst try,
The truthful, well-weighed answer
That tells the blacker lie—
The loud, uneasy virtue
The anger feigned at will,
To overbear a witness
And make the Court keep still.
Take order now, Gehazi,
That no man talk aside
In secret with his judges
The while his case is tried.
Lest he should show them—reason
To keep a matter hid,
And subtly lead the questions
Away from what he did.
Thou mirror of uprightness,
What ails thee at thy vows?
What means the risen whiteness
Of the skin between thy brows?
The boils that shine and burrow,
The sores that slough and bleed—
The leprosy of Naaman
On thee and all thy seed?
Stand up, stand up, Gehazi,
Draw close thy robe and go,
Gehazi, Judge in Israel,
A leper white as snow!
Unfortunately, as can be seen from these two examples, many of Kipling’s poems depend for understanding on deep familiarity with both the Old and New Testaments, so even now they are probably incomprehensible to many, and in a few decades in the post-Christian West, only experts will be able to grasp the metaphors. This is hardly Kipling’s fault, though; it is ours.
Kipling seems to have been a difficult man. While he always empathized with the common man (unlike the “Decadents,” such as Oscar Wilde, who viewed the common man with contempt), he grew away from immersing himself in popular culture over time. And in his upper class milieu, he viewed most relationships through a political prism, and he was very good at hating others and accumulating enemies. This seems like it would have been exhausting, but it worked for him.
Kipling was also a pessimist throughout his life. As Gilmour says, “Pessimists and reactionaries make the best prophets because they are without illusions, because they can see behind as well as beyond contemporary viewpoints. . . . . Prophets, as the Old Testament reveals, say unpalatable things and say them in provocative and unpleasant language. So did Kipling. . . . . But there was an excuse for his bitterness, as there was with Jeremiah—he KNEW what was going to happen.” Kipling predicted various bad things—the disappearance of Empire; that the Boers would impose apartheid if the English let them run South Africa; that the Kaiser would bring about a war; that if England left India there would be carnage between Hindu and Muslim; and much more. But he was always proven right, even after his death, as with the military resurgence of Germany. He would have agreed with Winston Churchill, whom he loathed as a “political whore,” that “the Hun is always either at your throat or your feet” (although now, courtesy of Angela Merkel, the Hun has prostrated itself voluntarily to a new enemy, whom it has welcomed in their migrant millions---something of which Kipling would doubtless have clearly seen the results). We could use Kipling’s pessimism, to counteract the combination of Pollyanna and ostrich that characterizes the political whores of today, such as Merkel.
And, most importantly, as Gilmour again says, “The spirit of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain owed much to Kipling.” Of course, that spirit is long gone, in an enervated England ruled by faithless globalist elites. Most likely it can never be restored, despite the good sense of the slight majority of Britain’s inhabitants recently voting to exit the EU and restore some small measure of British sovereignty. But that’s a long cry from the spirit of World War II, which was itself a long cry from the spirit of 1890. The breath of Empire, once gone, does not return, but perhaps an appreciation of the virtues of Kipling, and some hard choices and hard deeds, could restore England to once again be an example for the world.
Read
September 2, 2023Good background reading about Kipling within the British Empire
January 25, 2011
As part of my Rudyard Kipling fix, I purchased this biography. It is very well written, infusing Kiplings poems into the narrative to explain his life. It definitely had its "slow" moments but I enjoyed it. As an American, I am always a little embarrassed about how much "world history" I know little about. I learned a ton about British imperialism in this book. A great read for me but is more text book than "story."
December 14, 2024
It's well known that Kipling was a drum beat for the British Empire. Since this book is dedicated to his "Imperial Life" that is, his political journey in light of his time, I therefore expected to see his opinions regarding British Imperialism and the racism underpinning it being, at the very least, questioned somehow. Were they the norm among his contemporaries and Kipling the outspoken voice of widespread and common views among English people back then? Or, on the contrary, was he a radical, way off the mark even for his time; a man those ethos was as repellent then as it is to us now? Well, tough luck but David Gilmour fails to deliver on that score -and fails spectacularly at that!
The problem here is not the research nor the reckoning made about Kipling. Gilmour perfectly recognises that Kipling was an anti-Semitic and a racist; a man full of hatred for whole groups of people (races as much as nations) and whose opinions can only revolt us now. The problem is that he excuses them away, not by arguing that they were typical of his time (if they were at all) but by excusing away British Imperialism itself. How so?
They are people, even still to this day, who genuinely think that European Imperialism was a civilising endeavour; that Westerners were better (morally, technologically, politically) than non-Westerners; that, despite all its shortcomings and the crimes which were committed in its name colonialism should therefore be seen, in the end, has having proven more beneficial than bad to those having suffered under its yoke. Completely blind to the brutal racism and White Supremacy which had in fact motivated what was nothing but a violent system of exploitation, those people genuinely believe, then, that the whole period was on the contrary motivated by a necessary moral duty, an ethical imperative. David Gilmour, sadly, is one of those people. For instance, here's how he interprets the brutal conquering and subjugating of the colonised, the fate of the dehumanised and plundered for the benefits of European nations:
In a world without Oxfam and the United Nations, it was the responsibility of the richest and most civilized nations to help the poorest, not for reasons of vanity or self-aggrandizement, but because it was their duty to keep the peace, to bring justice and education, to protect minorities, to prevent people from dying of disease and starvation.
Elsewhere, he wants us to believe that such entitled attitude over others could only be "natural", since European's history had been so "relatively peaceful" in comparison that it could only give Britain and its people an "innate" superiority:
at that time the British were more capable of performing certain tasks than the Indians. And that seemed entirely natural: after all, they possessed the experience and self-confidence innate in citizens of a prosperous country with a large empire and a long and relatively peaceful history of political development.
Now, of course, to anyone knowing better when it comes to history (the history of the people concerned as much as that of Europe) such stances will smack as being nothing but historical revisionism, gobsmacking enough as it is. The issue, though, is the impact that such wishy-washy about the true nature of British Imperialism has upon his interpretation of Kipling's work as a defender for such regime. How so?
If you think, here, that the statements quoted above are as ignorant as they are shocking, then you need to brace yourself. David Gilmour goes on indeed to try and argue that the line lesser breeds without the law in the poem Recessional ought not to be interpreted as xenophobic arrogance (let alone a racial slur) but a Biblical warning against the English nation should it fail to serve its civilising mission; that the term White Man in The White Man's Burden is no reference to skin colour at all but, on the contrary, to whiteness as a Biblical symbol of goodness and purity, as opposed to darkness symbolising evil! You get the gist: to justify his ignorant historical views, David Gilmour doesn't hesitate to completely white-wash even bluntly expressed racism. Needless to say, it makes -at time- for a stomach-churning read. But is it all that bad?
If there is anything that the author gets right is his reckoning that Kipling, for all his despicable views, was, nevertheless, a prophet of sort. He had foreseen the decline and ultimate end to come of the Empire. He had foreseen that the fate of South Africa under the Boers would be far worse for the Black Africans that what it was under the British. He had foreseen the dangerous militarism of Germany, hence a war to be inevitable. He had foreseen that allowing India to be independent would lead to a bloodbath between some of its Hindu and Muslim factions. The problem is that David Gilmour fails to foresee how such predictions don't make for British Imperialism to be perceived as being better somehow, hence for Kipling's views on colonialism to be acceptable even by the standard of his time (e.g. he was mocked as a jingoist for a reason; the fact that no one from the literary establishment then turned up at his funeral being telling enough...). David Gilmour himself, in fact (and despite all of his wiggling around otherwise) has no choice but to reckon that Kipling embodied ideas prevalent in his youth, but that times were then changing also and that he didn't change with them as he grew old. That's fair enough.
All in all, a political biography of Kipling definitely ought to be more than welcome. His opinions were repulsive for sure, but then again so were the behaviours and attitudes of many of his contemporaries. Was Kipling, then, a typical voice of his era? Or was he, on the contrary, a rad-Tory and ridicule flag-weaver whom even most of his contemporaries found unsufferable? The question remains open, although the author acknowledges (again) that Kipling was far too inflexible to shift with the then moving zeitgeist of Britain when it came to such issues (e.g. racism, colonialism, foreign policies). The bottom line, though, is that the personal views of the author on Imperialism itself (or, at least, on what truly motivated it) were far too repellent to me personally for me to give any credence to his points. I preferred, and by far, reading Rudyard Kipling: A Life.
The problem here is not the research nor the reckoning made about Kipling. Gilmour perfectly recognises that Kipling was an anti-Semitic and a racist; a man full of hatred for whole groups of people (races as much as nations) and whose opinions can only revolt us now. The problem is that he excuses them away, not by arguing that they were typical of his time (if they were at all) but by excusing away British Imperialism itself. How so?
They are people, even still to this day, who genuinely think that European Imperialism was a civilising endeavour; that Westerners were better (morally, technologically, politically) than non-Westerners; that, despite all its shortcomings and the crimes which were committed in its name colonialism should therefore be seen, in the end, has having proven more beneficial than bad to those having suffered under its yoke. Completely blind to the brutal racism and White Supremacy which had in fact motivated what was nothing but a violent system of exploitation, those people genuinely believe, then, that the whole period was on the contrary motivated by a necessary moral duty, an ethical imperative. David Gilmour, sadly, is one of those people. For instance, here's how he interprets the brutal conquering and subjugating of the colonised, the fate of the dehumanised and plundered for the benefits of European nations:
In a world without Oxfam and the United Nations, it was the responsibility of the richest and most civilized nations to help the poorest, not for reasons of vanity or self-aggrandizement, but because it was their duty to keep the peace, to bring justice and education, to protect minorities, to prevent people from dying of disease and starvation.
Elsewhere, he wants us to believe that such entitled attitude over others could only be "natural", since European's history had been so "relatively peaceful" in comparison that it could only give Britain and its people an "innate" superiority:
at that time the British were more capable of performing certain tasks than the Indians. And that seemed entirely natural: after all, they possessed the experience and self-confidence innate in citizens of a prosperous country with a large empire and a long and relatively peaceful history of political development.
Now, of course, to anyone knowing better when it comes to history (the history of the people concerned as much as that of Europe) such stances will smack as being nothing but historical revisionism, gobsmacking enough as it is. The issue, though, is the impact that such wishy-washy about the true nature of British Imperialism has upon his interpretation of Kipling's work as a defender for such regime. How so?
If you think, here, that the statements quoted above are as ignorant as they are shocking, then you need to brace yourself. David Gilmour goes on indeed to try and argue that the line lesser breeds without the law in the poem Recessional ought not to be interpreted as xenophobic arrogance (let alone a racial slur) but a Biblical warning against the English nation should it fail to serve its civilising mission; that the term White Man in The White Man's Burden is no reference to skin colour at all but, on the contrary, to whiteness as a Biblical symbol of goodness and purity, as opposed to darkness symbolising evil! You get the gist: to justify his ignorant historical views, David Gilmour doesn't hesitate to completely white-wash even bluntly expressed racism. Needless to say, it makes -at time- for a stomach-churning read. But is it all that bad?
If there is anything that the author gets right is his reckoning that Kipling, for all his despicable views, was, nevertheless, a prophet of sort. He had foreseen the decline and ultimate end to come of the Empire. He had foreseen that the fate of South Africa under the Boers would be far worse for the Black Africans that what it was under the British. He had foreseen the dangerous militarism of Germany, hence a war to be inevitable. He had foreseen that allowing India to be independent would lead to a bloodbath between some of its Hindu and Muslim factions. The problem is that David Gilmour fails to foresee how such predictions don't make for British Imperialism to be perceived as being better somehow, hence for Kipling's views on colonialism to be acceptable even by the standard of his time (e.g. he was mocked as a jingoist for a reason; the fact that no one from the literary establishment then turned up at his funeral being telling enough...). David Gilmour himself, in fact (and despite all of his wiggling around otherwise) has no choice but to reckon that Kipling embodied ideas prevalent in his youth, but that times were then changing also and that he didn't change with them as he grew old. That's fair enough.
All in all, a political biography of Kipling definitely ought to be more than welcome. His opinions were repulsive for sure, but then again so were the behaviours and attitudes of many of his contemporaries. Was Kipling, then, a typical voice of his era? Or was he, on the contrary, a rad-Tory and ridicule flag-weaver whom even most of his contemporaries found unsufferable? The question remains open, although the author acknowledges (again) that Kipling was far too inflexible to shift with the then moving zeitgeist of Britain when it came to such issues (e.g. racism, colonialism, foreign policies). The bottom line, though, is that the personal views of the author on Imperialism itself (or, at least, on what truly motivated it) were far too repellent to me personally for me to give any credence to his points. I preferred, and by far, reading Rudyard Kipling: A Life.
September 9, 2024
An enlightening and informative book and well constructed by David Gilmour. As the author says Kipling is often criticised as an Imperialist and racist by people who have never read him and whilst he was lauded as the “Laureate of Empire” he portrayed the people and culture of India more positively than he did their expatriate overlords. He was undoubtedly misogynist, anti-emancipation and anti-democratic but he gave as many words and phrases to the English Language as did Shakespeare. His political commentaries prophesied South African apartheid, Hindu Muslim conflict in India and two world wars. And there are still lessons to be had from his body of work. He was undoubtedly a child of his time, as we are children of our time.
September 6, 2021
Kipling appears to be having a bit of a moment as the Pax Americana crumbles before our eyes. Kipling's anger at the waffling and political weakness in parliament and the betrayal of the empire and the soldiers doing their damnedest to defend it is particularly relatable as Biden's debacle unfolds in all its horror. Gilmour's treatment is comprehensive and fair. I was introduced to many poems and stories that I hadn't heard of before. Bit of a slog at times but quite educational for anyone interested in the time period.
February 7, 2021
An interesting look into the life of Rudyard Kipling. Lots of discussion about his work as well as political and world events at the time.
September 1, 2016
This biography of Rudyard Kipling, a talented writer and poet and at the same time an outspoken advocate for the British Empire was first published in Great Britain. As such, one must be already quite familiar with the history of Great Britain in the late 1800’s all the way into the 1930’s as the author does not conveniently lay out the details of, say, the Boer War, the ‘Khaki’ Election of 1900, and the issues of Home Rule, Free Trade and Tariff Reform, all of which Kipling was involved with. The non-British reader is sometimes, therefore, led to puzzle over things like “(Kipling) did not regret the departure of Balfour who was easily beaten in East Manchester, and hoped he would never come back as Prime Minister. But however much he despised the Tories he knew that the Liberals would be worse”. But, since Kipling was such an opinionated and influential person of his time, we need to know the politics and the contemporary state of society to understand him. I became interested in Kipling as a child, when I avidly read over and over his ‘Just So Stories’, tales for children written for his own children (one of which, ‘How the Alphabet was Made’, was during deep mourning at the death of his first child Josephine, and from this perspective becomes quite poignant). Later I read some of his short stories, especially liking the chilling ‘The Return of Imray’ and ‘The Phantom Rickshaw’. He wrote some great poetry (The Recessional, written in the Jubilee Year of Queen Victoria which presciently mourns the coming fall of the British Empire), of course the notorious ‘The White Man’s Burden’, and some deeply felt poetry on the slaughter of English soldiers during the Great War (they tended to naively march in file towards the fortifications and machine gun nests of the Germans and were mowed down by the hundreds of thousands). To his great credit, although Kipling was reactionary and unyielding on many issues (just for example Women’s Suffrage), he observed deeply and loved the ways of the common people, the sights and smells, be they British soldiers or the Moslems of Lahore where he was posted for many years. He represented them effectively in his writings so that they come vibrantly alive even today. The author has observed that anyone who has read his best novel, ‘Kim’ would lose 90% of any preconceived notions of Kipling as an uncaring, racist and hopelessly opinionated person…but he is Kipling, so that other 10% remains. I really enjoyed this biography for its putting into context some of the magic I’ve found in reading Kipling, but the reader should be aware that it is written very much from the political and societal point of view and therefore fairly narrow in its focus.
November 7, 2025
David Gilmour is an excellent biographer, warm and sympathetic, appreciative of Kipling's genius, but makes no attempt to defend him at his reactionary worst. Describes Kipling correctly as a poet & a prophet, though he refused most official honours he was the unofficial poet of the British Empire, and his poems & short stories bring to life the experiences of the British army, adventurers and bureaucrats particularly in India. And of course his work for children, Just So Stories & Jungle Book, are wonderfully inventive and child friendly, Gilmour says one great pity of Kipling's life is that due to tragedy, he had no grandchildren, but he would have been a perfect grandfather.
March 14, 2009
Clear and focused, yet so nuanced as to be inconclusive. Whether or not Kipling was an imperialist is not left open to debate, as this is readily apparent from even a cursory study of his work; what this book irritatingly fails to deliver is a judgment on his imperialist tendencies. The writing is accessible yet bland, so this book could have been so much more.
January 28, 2017
An exceptionally good biography of Kipling as writer and especially as public figure and thinker. Gilmour paints a nuanced picture of Kipling's relationship to the British Empire, and shows how each affected the other. He also sets the context for the writing of many of Kipling's greatest stories and poems (as well as a few of the most dreadful--anyone as prolific as Kipling has a few clunkers).
January 9, 2015
Very detailed with many sources. It jumps around a bit at times, making it hard to keep up with. The author sometimes seems to worried about political correctness, holding Kipling to 21st century PC standards. Will definitely read again though.
April 30, 2010
Dry. Very dry.
April 17, 2011
Apart from being fascinating about Kipling and his milieu(s), an elegant seminar in everything a good biography of an impossibly complicated individual should be. I look forward to reading it again.
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