An Icon Of Empire

Another book about Rudyard Kipling — nearly 50 are listed in the bibliography of The Long Recessional (John Murray; 351 pages) — needs to be exceptional to succeed. The first biography of this icon of the British Empire was published in 1900 when Kipling was 34. Ever since, a steady stream of books covering every aspect of his work and life has sustained interest in a writer who is said to have added more phrases to the English language than any man since Shakespeare.

By focusing on the political aspects of Kipling's career — in particular, his role as imperial cheerleader and later as a Cassandra of national decline — David Gilmour stakes out a distinctive position. Based on extensive research, The Long Recessional is stylishly written, enjoyable to read and occasionally revelatory. But whether it lives up to its claim to demonstrate Kipling's enduring influence on how Britons regard themselves and their heritage is debatable.

According to a bbc poll Gilmour cites, Kipling's famous ode to self-improvement, If, remains Britain's favorite poem. His verse and stories about the British in India still largely determine how the Brits think of that era. His lifelong interest in the country's military transformed its reputation. His home in Sussex has become a national shrine. More subtly, Kipling — the least pretentious of men and ever supportive of the underdog — had a huge and permanent influence in closing the gap in Britain between "high" and "popular" culture.

But as Gilmour underlines in this essentially sympathetic portrait, Kipling had a darker side. Subsequent generations have found many of his political, racial and sexual attitudes cynically distasteful. He was a world champion hater who found it impossible to forgive and engaged in numerous ferocious vendettas, not least against liberals. His provocative language offended many, even in his own lifetime, and he was a stranger to compromise. "Politics as 'the art of the possible' was a notion Kipling was never able to assimilate," writes Gilmour with vast understatement.

Today, a century after his heyday, it is hard to grasp the immense influence Kipling wielded through his words and images. Mark Twain described him as "the only living person not head of a nation, whose voice is heard around the world the moment it drops a remark." It's a measure of this balanced book that Gilmour puts Kipling firmly in the context of his time but does not attempt to defend the indefensible. As he stresses, Kipling — ever the realist — touched real chords in the British psyche during the first 40 years of his life. Later he got many important things right, especially his view of the Nazis as they came to power in Germany. But basically he failed to change with the times. Now, seven decades after his death, Kipling's attitudes seem too contradictory and reactionary to reach a generation gorged on virtual reality.