num_pages: 351
description: "Readable and reliable . . . [Gilmour's] assessment of the political background of Kipling's writings is exemplary." —Earl L. Dachslager, Houston ChronicleDavid Gilmour's superbly nuanced biography of Rudyard Kipling, now available in paperback, is the first to show how the great writer's life and work mirrored the trajectory of the British Empire, from its zenith to its final decades. His great poem "Recessional" celebrated Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and his last poems warned of the dangers of Nazism, while Kipling himself, an icon of the empire, was transformed from an apostle of success to a prophet of national decline. As Gilmour makes clear, Kipling's mysterious and enduring works deeply influenced the way his readers saw both themselves and the British Empire, and they continue to challenge our own generation.
language: English
title: The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling
titlecomplete: The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling
genres: Nonfiction, Biography, History, European History
ratings_count: 73
awards: awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux