312. Rudyard Kipling: Son of Empire (Part 1)

The influence of India on Kipling resulted in what has always struck me as a personality in conflict with itself, part bazaarboy, part saab. Kipling is a writer with a storm inside him, and he creates a mirror storm of contradictory responses in the reader. I have never been able to read Kipling calmly. Anger and delight are incompatible emotions, yet the stories do indeed have the power, simultaneously, to infuriate and to entrance. Well that was Salman Rushdie writing as a young critic around the time he wrote Midnight's Children about Rudyard Kipling, the subject of not just this week's pod, but uh an entire miniseries that we've been saving up

as the climax of our Writers in Empire series. And sadly, it's just me this week because poor Anita has a bad back and is in A and E. So please say a prayer for her. And I'm going to particularly miss her this week because this subject is one that we talked about doing right from the first inception or conception of this pod. And it was always something that we disagreed on.

Anita and I agree on most things. And Kipling is something we disagreed on. I'm rather a convert to Kipling and and in middle age I've rather judged him anew as as someone I'm very interested in. Juanita just hates him and thinks he's an old beggar. Before I introduce our superstar guest who uh is waiting to say hello to you all, I should just lay out my cards about why we're doing Kipling, because like Rushdie, Kipling is a writer who fills me with contradictory.

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