The Long Recessional, The Imperial Life Of Rudyard Kipling: David Gilmour

[poliphilo]

In art he practised the virtues of restraint and showed wide human sympathies, in politics he was immoderate and narrow. The story of Kipling's political life is distressing- not so much for his affiliations and views- which are defensible if generally on the wrong side of history- as for the venom and hysteria with which he pursued them- as revealed here through his private correspondence. He was- as he said of Bonar Law, one of the few politicians he admired, "a good hater".

I don't suppose I'll forget the contents of this book, but I'd like to.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Yet I read of his desperate search for his only son who went missing in action in WW1 recently and got a completely different side of the man- it was heartbreaking.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Have you seen My Boy Jack- the film about the death of his son? It's very well done.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

No, but I have read the original book on which it is based. Didn't Daniel Radcliffe play Jack Kipling?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

He did- with David Haig as Rud.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

He wrote about the whole battalion his son was in and had an exhaustive of the battle where he went missing. It was one of my sources for a particular scene in the novel!