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This fascinating book is almost a guilty pleasure in these times of post-imperial political correctness. Kipling! Isn't he the guy who wrote all those jingoistic songs about how great the British Empire was and Fuzzy-Wuzzies and things like that? How can you be reading that?

Well, needless to say, popular perception is as usual far from the truth. Even in 1941 when you might expect jingoism to be in vogue, Eliot felt it necessary to explain that he could find no trace of racism in Kipling, and that far from being an apologist for the Empire, he was trying to encourage people to live up to a higher ideal than the greed and exploitation that were as common then as they are now.

© Ian Alexander 2004