Kipling as a Science Fiction writer
Poul Anderson, a leading American science fiction writer, wrote of Kipling: “He is for everyone who responds to vividness, word magic, sheer storytelling. Most readers go on to discover the subtleties and profundities.” There are…
Latest Newsletter
Our Newsletter October 2023 provides details of our future meetings, including a talk ‘Kipling and masculinity: “But a good cigar is a smoke”’ by our Librarian John Walker (22 November), a book discussion of ‘The…
Kipling’s Atlas
When Max Aitken, the future Lord Beaverbrook, came to England from Canada in 1910, one of the first people he made friends with was Rudyard Kipling, the most widely read author in the English speaking…
Rottingdean Tour film
The filmed tour of Kipling’s Rottingdean, shown at the meeting of 20 September 2023, can now be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlJVwApwUTk
The John McGivering Writing Prize 2023 – Results
Janet Montefiore writes: Competitors were invited to submit poems about war for this year’s John McGivering Writing Prize, with an accompanying competition for Younger Writers. 61 poems, and 6 from younger writers were submitted and…
Discussion: ‘The Light that Failed’
On Thursday 20th April at 6pm there was an online meeting to discuss Kipling’s The Light That Failed, his first novel and an intriguing tale of unrequited love, art, war and male comradery. A recording…
Kipling, Rajahs and the Raj
Professor Harish Trivedi delivered a most interesting talk under the above title on 19 May 2023. A recording of the meeting can now be viewed at Kipling, Rajahs and the Raj – YouTube
The web-site since the Face-lift
As the nights get longer in northern latitudes use of the internet tends to increase. Our r reader numbers are currently some 3008 a day. sometimes a little higher sometimes lower. The verse is the…
Recording of 1 February 2023 meeting
On 1 February 2023, Rufus Vaughn-Spruce spoke to the Society on the topic ‘The Other Man Who Could Write: Stephen Wheeler as Man of Letters’. The recording of Rufus’s talk and the discussion which followed…
The King’s Pilgrimage
On 16 November 2022, Christopher Kreuzer gave a talk to the Society on the 1922 visit of King George V to the Flanders war graves, the subject of Kipling’s poem ‘The King’s Pilgrimage’, during which…
This week’s quotations
November 5th to 11th
From his three hundred and fifty stories and nine hundred poems Kipling has contributed more familiar quotations to our language than anyone since Shakespeare. Here’s another group of three for you to identify …
‘Be quick,’ said Athira; and Suket Singh was quick; but Athira was quick no longer. Then he lit the pile at the four corners and climbed on to it, re-loading the gunThe little flames began to peer up between the big logs atop of the brushwood.
‘The Government should teach us to pull the triggers with our toes,’ said Suket Singh grimly to the moon.
I slid from the boom into deep water, and behind me came the wave of the wrath of the river. I heard its voice and the scream of the middle part of the bridge as it moved from the piers and sank, and I knew no more till I rose in the middle of the great flood. I put forth my hand to swim, and lo! it fell upon the knotted hair of the head of a man. He was dead, for no one but I, the Strong One of Barhwi, could have lived in that race.
From the black dark Bisesa held out her arms into the moonlight. Both hands had been cut off at the wrists, and the stumps were nearly healed.
Then, as Bisesa bowed her head between her arms and sobbed, some one in the room grunted like a wild beast, and something sharp-knife, sword, or spear, thrust at Trejago in his boorka.
Here are the sources of these extracts
Past Newsletters
Newsletters are sent by e-mail to members four weeks before each Society meeting, with details of that meeting and other events, reports on past events, and articles on subjects large and small. Past newsletters are available below, each with an item of particular interest highlighted.
Any member who is not currently receiving an online copy of the Newsletter and would like their name to be added to the mailing list should email the Membership Secretary, Fiona Renshaw, at ksmemsec@outlook.com
- August 2023 Reminiscences of Bateman’s
- June 2023 A new discovery at Bateman’s
- March 2023 Kim: An introduction to India – part 1
- January 2023 A letter from Lord Roberts
- October 2022 The Dalleys of Goldings HIll Farm – part 2
- August 2022. Why I read Kipling – part 1
- June 2022 Policy on Derogatory Terminology
- March 2022 Kipling’s uncle, Harry Macdonald
- January 2022 Kipling and Bairnsfather – final part
- October 2021 Kipling’s Uncle Joseph
- August 2021 A tribute to Peter Bellamy
- May 2021 ‘Something in Common’ – final part
- March 2021 ‘If’ reimagined – read by Serena Williams
- February 2021 ‘Rudyard Kipling and Bruce Bairnsfather’ part 1
- January 2021 ‘Something in Common’ – Rottingdean and Glendale
- December 2020 Filming with Michael Portillo at Bateman’s
- October 2020 ‘Rudyard Kipling, A Secret Life’
- August 2020 Burwash Forge Part 2
- July 2020 Remembering John McGivering
- June 2020 Burwash Forge Part 1
- April 2020 A Short History of Bateman’s (2)
- March 2020 A Short History of Bateman’s (1)
- January 2020 Kipling and Beerbohm Tree
- October 2019 Kipling in Epping Forest
- August 2019 Kipling and Rider Haggard
- June 2019 Lady Butler, War artist and Traveller
- March 2019 Kipling’s Motoring Diaries
- January 2019 Kipling’s statue in Burwash
- November 2018 The new Mowgli film
- November 2018 “The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories”
- October 2018 “Into the Jungle”
- March 2018 Society business
- July 2017 “A Diversity of Kipling”