Barrack-Room Ballads

In the voices and slang of ordinary British soldiers, the 'Tommy Atkins' of the Victorian army, these poems tell of barrack life, of fighting in India, Burma, Afghanistan and the Sudan, and of a public that cheers its soldiers in war and despises them in peace. They include 'Gunga Din', about an Indian water-carrier who dies saving a soldier's life; 'Mandalay', with its longing for the East; 'Danny Deever', about a military hanging; and 'Fuzzy-Wuzzy', a tribute to the Sudanese warriors who broke a British square.

Rudyard Kipling published the collection in 1892, and its music-hall rhythms made the poems enormously popular, though their imperial outlook is now much debated. Read Plain Tales from the Hills and Kim, and see his life.

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was born in Bombay, sent to England at five to an unhappy foster home, and returned to India at sixteen to work as a journalist in Lahore. His stories of Anglo-Indian life made him famous in London in his twenties.

The Jungle Book, written in Vermont, Kim and Just So Stories became classics, and in 1907 he became the first English-language writer to win the Nobel Prize. His poem 'If—' is still widely quoted, though his support for empire makes him a controversial figure today. His only son was killed in the First World War.