[log in to unmask]" type="cite">I have recently read Kipling's Choice and I am rather surprised to find at least two inaccuracies:
- p.62, we read that Captain Alexander (who actually served with the Irish Guards in WWI) 'would later be promoted to field marshall and "Duke of Tunis"'; he was in fact made 'Earl of Tunis' after WWII
- p. 119, the date given is 'Saturday, September 25, 1915' and we read that 'Field-Marshal Haig is watching the smoke wafting from his cigarette at the same predawn moment'; in 1915, though, Haig was not yet Field-Marshal - he was promoted, I think, in 1917.
Also, on the back cover of the 2005 Houghton Mifflin Company edition (English translation), we read that 'As a young man, the author Rudyard Kipling was devastated when his military application was rejected because of his poor eyesight'. I have not been able to trace any reference to such an application in four of the biographies of Kipling I have consulted (Carrington, Wilson, Birkenhead, Lycett) - but I may well have missed something. Harry Ricketts (1999) only mentions that 'it was becoming increasingly obvious that...his eyesight debarred Rud from a career in the Services' (1881, before he left Westward Ho!).
I hope it helps.
John Seriot
From: To exchange information and views on the life and work of Rudyard Kipling <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Elaine Dyke <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 08 March 2017 16:37
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: 'Kipling's Choice' by Gert SpillebeenI am about to start the second year of an English MA with the Open University and have decided to write about Kipling's life in Sussex and his involvement with the Irish Guards. I have just read the novel 'Kipling's Choice' by Geert Spillebeen and was wondering if anyone can tell me how much of this is factual i.e. the correspondence between him and his family, and the correspondence from Sergeant's Kinneally and Cochrane. I realise that the portrayal of John's death is fictional, but a lot of the other information given seems very real i.e. only 2 men surviving out of 900 King's Own Scottish Borderers at Loos.
Any help anyone can give would be greatly appreciated.
Thanking you
Elaine Dyke