The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling (review)

Abstract

Long unpopular in academic circles, Kipling's reputation has undergone a sea change since 9/11 provoked American sabre rattling, and David [End Page 582] Gilmour could not have picked a better time to publish his latest work, The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling, a sympathetic look at the British Empire's best known and possibly most prescient apologist. As Gilmour points out in his readable and well-informed biography, Kipling prophesied the Hindu-Muslim butchery in an independent India and the racism of a Boer South Africa, both of which he felt the British Empire's benevolent paternalism could have prevented, and cautioned an indifferent England that Germany would soon prove a vicious enemy.