‘The Surprising Mr Kipling’, an anthology of Rudyard Kipling’s poems by Brian Harris OBE, QC has been described by Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, as ‘a splendid collection’. Mr Harris has now produced a follow-up anthology of Kipling’s short stories entitled, ‘The Two Sided Man’.

As well as a collection of some of the Nobel Prize winning author’s finest stories the book deals head-on with the charges of racialism and imperialism that have been levelled against Kipling, as well as his attitude towards politics and religion.

Asked why should we read Kipling today Mr Harris answers:

‘Kipling should be read for the same reasons we turn to any great writer, for the beauty, lucidity and force of his prose and for his perspicacity and insights. Here is someone who paid the respect that is due, but not always accorded even now, to the alien, the poor and the oppressed. As the unofficial spokesman of the greatest empire in the history of the world he described accurately and sympathetically the lives of the peoples living under its jurisdiction. Though no orthodox believer, he prized and in his writings illustrated the great Christian virtues of charity, compassion and forgiveness, as well as the more modest British virtue of toleration. Nor is it possible to read his stories without being surprised by the light they so often throw on the eternal mysteries of love, pain and loss. 

‘Ultimately, however, we read him, as our fathers have done before us, for sheer enjoyment.’