The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling-David Gilmour

The Long RecessionalThe Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling\nAuthor(s): David Gilmour\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Vintage, United Kingdom\nImprint: Pimlico\nISBN-13: 9780712665186, 978-0712665186\nSynopsis\nRudyard Kipling was a unique figure in British history, a great writer and a great imperial icon. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he added more phrases to the language than any man since Shakespeare, yet he was also the Apostle of the British Empire, a man who incarnated an era for millions of people who did not normally read poetry. A child of the Victorian age of imperial self-confidence, Kipling lived to see the rise of Hitler threaten his country's existence. The laureate of the Empire at its apogee, he foresaw that its demise would soon follow his death. His great poem 'Recessional' celebrated Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897; his last poems warned of the dangers of Nazism. The trajectory of his life matched the trajectory of the British Empire from its zenith .