The Birkenhead Poems

As a companion post to 'The Victorian Titanic', here are the two commemorative poems by Francis Hastings Doyle and Rudyard Kipling celebrating the heroes of the Birkenhead, lost off Danger point, February 26, 1852... ‘The Loss of the Birkenhead’ by Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, 2nd Baronet, Professor of Poetry, Oxford (Supposed to be told by…

Looking into Hell: Kipling and the Great War

Guest post for Wordsworth Editions... During a visit in the winter of 1918, Rider Haggard – who believed in reincarnation – asked Rudyard Kipling if he thought the earth was one of the hells. His old friend replied that he did not think this, he was certain of it (qtd. in Wilson: 1994, 306). And…

The Dark Places of the Earth

Guest piece for Wordsworth Editions. In ‘The Man Who Would Be King,’ Rudyard Kipling described the Native States of India as, ‘the dark places of the earth, full of unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on one side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid’ (Kipling: 1890, 69). In this allegory of…