Showing results by author "Rudyard Kipling" in All Categories

Rudyard Kipling's classic tale (first published in The Jungle Book, and considered by many to be the best of those stories) details the fearless exploits of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a young mongoose whom misadventure had fortuitously brought to live at the bungalow of an expatriate British family in India. Rikki Tikki through great presence of mind, fortitude, and simply by being a mongoose saves the family from the murderous intent of two cobras.

The Ballad of Tommy Atkins was first published as “Tommy” in Kipling’s timeless Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses, in the 1890s. ‘Tommy Atkins’, or simply Tommy was a generic name applied to British soldiers from as early as the 18th century, but came into popular parlance during the First World War when troops were simply referred to as “Tommies”. The ballad exposes the bitterness felt by the British soldier to the public’s treatment of their forces in times of peace, and how that alters in wartime.

Two science fiction stories in which Rudyard Kipling imagined a future world controlled by the Aërial Board of Control with its motto, "Transportation is Civilization". In 'With the Night Mail' a postal packet makes an eventful night run across the North Atlantic from London to Quebec..... . A follow up story 'As Easy as ABC' had more to say about the political organization of this new world. (Summary by Phil Benson)- Summary by Phil Benson

You're up against the wall with nowhere to turn...heart pounding, muscles tense, adrenaline pumping! There's no escape when you're listening to... Escape! Get set for 20 seat-of-your-pants excursions into the world of high adventure!

The beloved poem from the great Rudyard Kipling. If you can follow these precepts, you will indeed be a man, my son.

The Jungle Book is a collection of stories, originally published in magazines in the late 1800s, that involve animals with anthropomorphic characteristics to convey moral lessons. The most famous of these stories involves a young Indian boy named Mowgli who was raised by wolves in the Indian jungle. He and his friends - Baloo, a sloth bear; and Bagheera, a black panther - go on many adventures, culminating in a fight with the jungle's bully, the tiger Shere Khan.

Christmas, they say, comes but once a year. In these days it seems to also last for much of that year - but this volume is not just for Christmas! For the religious amongst us, this annual celebration of the Birth of Christ must seem bitter sweet: it's acknowledgment by billions of people countered by the pervasive spread of material possessions translating the event to little more than a sales pitch for material wares.

In 1915, as the "Great War" (World War 1) entered its second year Rudyard Kipling made a journalistic tour of the front, visiting French armed forces. By then he was already winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (the first writer in English to be so honoured). He published his observations in articles in the Daily Telegraph in England, and in the New York Sun. At that stage of the war nationalistic sentiments were running high but the true cost of war was beginning to be understood "at home". The collection of journalistic pieces is preceded by a poem, "France", that had been published ...

In American Notes, Rudyard Kipling, the Nobel Prize-winning author of the Jungle Book, visits the USA. As the travel-diary of an Anglo-Indian Imperialist visiting the USA, these American Notes offer an interesting view of America in the 1880s.Kipling affects a wide-eyed innocence, and expresses astonishment at features of American life that differ from his own, not least the freedom (and attraction) of American women. However, he scorns the political machines that made a mockery of American democracy, and while exhibiting the racist attitudes that made him controversial in the 20th century ...

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. This decade is resplendent with literature and its many prodigiously talented authors who write on as varied a range of subjects as might be thought possible. Yet each is studded with careful literary precision and narrative verve. It is a remarkable decade.

In Kipling's 1912 story, As Easy as ABC, set 65 years after its predecessor With the Night Mail, the Aerial Board has complete control over the social and economic affairs of every nation. When a mob of disgruntled Serviles in the District of Northern Illinois demands the return of democracy, the ABC sends a team of troubleshooters and a fleet of 200 zeppelins to take such steps as might be necessary for the resumption of traffic and all that that implies.

Kipling wrote only two science fiction stories, the first of which was "With the Night Mail"; both are set in his Aerial Board of Control universe and in the 21st century. The Aerial Board of Control is a fictional supranational organization created to manage air traffic for the whole world. The organisation was able to limit the influence of national states and create a de facto world government.

"Captains Courageous" is an 1897 novel by Rudyard Kipling that follows the adventures of fifteen year old Harvey Cheyne Jr., the arrogant and spoiled son of a railroad tycoon. The novel originally appeared as a serialization in McClure's, beginning with the November 1896 edition.

Written in 1914 by Rudyard Kipling, "For All We Have and Are" exhorts the British people to rally together with courage and strength in the coming desperate struggles.

Rudyard Kipling’s Gentlemen-Rankers first appeared in Barrack-Room Ballads and refers to young men of the privileged classes who may have suffered the indignity of bankruptcy or scandal, and joined the ‘rank-and-file’ of the British Army as privates.

Originally published as part of the Just So stories, this tale has no animals, but is the endearing story of a Neolithic child and the hilarious ramifications of attempting to request a fresh fishing spear from the village by use of a pictorial letter. As ever, Kipling’s timeless prose is evocatively presented by Phillip J Mather - an excellent listen!

Kipling’s timeless classic of How the Leopard Got His Spots is skilfully narrated by Phillip J. Mather. Phillip’s mellifluous tones transport the listener, young or old, back to a time when the world map was indeed coloured red!

The kangaroo once ambulated on four legs. This charming story by Rudyard Kipling, and wonderfully narrated by Phillip J. Mather tells us how the kangaroo became the marsupial we know today.

"The Beginning of the Armadillos" is a tale that focuses on two days in the lives of three creatures "who lived on the banks of the turbid Amazon": Stickly-Prickly the hedgehog, Slow-and-Solid the tortoise, and Painted Jaguar.

One of Kipling’s Just So stories that might have been named “How the Elephant Got His Trunk” takes us to the banks of the "Great Grey-Green, Greasy Limpopo" river. A timeless classic, masterfully narrated by Phillip J. Mather.