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 world. The Kiplings were invited to his house for Christmas in 1912 and Kipling made a present to his host of a magnificent atlas of the world.
On many of its pages, Kipling, an inveterate traveller, inscribed lines from his poems which express his feelings for different countries and regions onhe eve of the Great War.
David Richards has written an account of Kipling’s Atlas which is to be found here.