Rudyard Kipling

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2014

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling. Born in Bombay in 1865, Kipling has been described as the poet of Empire, celebrated for fictional works including Kim and The Jungle Book. Today his poem 'If--' remains one of the best known in the English language. Kipling was amongst the first writers in English to develop the short story as a literary form in its own right, and was the first British recipient of a Nobel Prize for Literature. A literary celebrity of the Edwardian era, Kipling's work for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission played a major role in Britain's cultural response to the First World War.

Contributors:

Howard Booth, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Manchester

Daniel Karlin, Winterstoke Professor of English Literature at the University of Bristol

Jan Montefiore, Professor of Twentieth Century English Literature at the University of Kent

Producer: Luke Mulhall.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
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0:43.2	UK slash radio for. I hope you enjoy the program.
0:47.0	Hello in March 1890 the Times published an editorial praising the-year-old author.
0:54.0	Quote, India has given us an abundance of soldiers and administrators,
0:58.0	it said, but she has seldom given us a writer.
1:01.0	There's no question, however, that she's done so. She's done this in the person of the
1:05.6	author of the numerous short stories and verses of which we give the titles below.
1:10.0	They were talking about Rudyard Kipling. In his early 20s already a prolific and celebrated literary figure.
1:16.0	He's best known for his children's works, the jungle book and the just so stories,
1:20.0	but Kipling was a writer of great range who tackled everything from espionage to duty or the
1:25.2	fairies that lived at the bottom of his garden.
1:27.6	He won the Nobel Prize for literature.
1:29.4	He was born and grew up in India and was a major apologist for the British Empire if it was run
1:34.0	correctly. This made and then perhaps unmade his reputation. With me to
1:38.9	discuss the work of Roger Kipling, Ajan Montefiore, a Jan Montefiore, a Jan Montefiore, professor of 20th century English
	...

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