50 Fun Facts About Rudyard Kipling

In which city was Rudyard Kipling born in 1865?

His father, John Lockwood Kipling, taught architectural sculpture at the newly founded Sir J. J. School of Art there.

Kipling's unusual first name came from a lake in which English county, where his parents had courted?

Rudyard Lake near Leek is a reservoir built in the 1790s to feed the Caldon Canal.

Which three-time British prime minister was Kipling's first cousin?

Their mothers were two of the four celebrated MacDonald sisters; another married the painter Edward Burne-Jones.

What did Kipling call the Southsea lodgings where he and his sister were left for six years as children?

He blamed Mrs Holloway's cruelty for teaching him to lie, which he called 'the foundation of literary effort'.

Kipling's schooldays at the United Services College in Devon inspired which story collection?

He reportedly went into spasms of laughter reading his own jokes from it aloud to the family.

At sixteen Kipling returned to India to work as assistant editor of which newspaper?

He called it his 'mistress and most true love'; his father was curator of the Lahore Museum.

What was Kipling's first prose collection, published in Calcutta in January 1888?

Thirty-nine of its stories had first appeared in the Gazette; he sold the rights for just 50 pounds.

Which American author quipped of Kipling, 'he covers all that can be known and I cover the rest'?

Twain's advice was to 'get your facts first and then you can distort 'em as much as you please'.

Which novelist gave away the bride at Kipling's 1892 wedding to Carrie Balestier?

The wedding took place in a London flu epidemic so bad that 'the undertakers had run out of black horses'.

In which US state did Kipling live from 1892 to 1896, writing the Jungle Books there?

His house, Naulakha, near Brattleboro, is now a National Historic Landmark you can rent from the Landmark Trust.

Kipling named his New England house Naulakha after what?

He had misspelt the novel's title as The Naulahka; this time, he noted, the name was spelt correctly.

Which family quarrel helped drive the Kiplings out of New England in 1896?

Beatty was arrested, but the resulting publicity destroyed Kipling's cherished privacy.

The Jungle Book stories are set around which place in what is now Madhya Pradesh?

Kipling wrote them in a seven-by-eight-foot workroom with snow up to the windowsill.

What kind of animal is Baloo, Mowgli's teacher in The Jungle Book?

Bagheera is the panther, Kaa the python and Shere Khan the tiger.

Which Jungle Book hero is a mongoose who battles the cobras Nag and Nagaina?

Kipling was probably inspired by a mongoose-and-snake tale in the ancient Indian Panchatantra.

The Cub Scout leader title Akela comes from which Jungle Book character?

Cubs also play 'Kim's Game', the memory exercise from Kipling's novel.

Kipling's novel Kim popularised which phrase for the Anglo-Russian rivalry in Central Asia?

Kim, an orphaned Irish soldier's son, is recruited as a spy while accompanying a Tibetan lama.

In Kim, the boy hero befriends an aged lama searching for what?

The lama hopes to free himself from the Wheel of Things; the novel treats Tibetan Buddhism sympathetically.

Kipling began the Just So Stories as bedtime tales for which daughter, who died of pneumonia in 1899?

He called her Effie; the narrator addresses 'O my Best Beloved' throughout, and Kipling drew the illustrations himself.

In the Just So Stories, why does the Whale have such a tiny throat?

Nine of the thirteen stories explain how animals got their features, from the leopard's spots to the camel's hump.

The poem 'If—' was written as a tribute to which leader of a failed 1895-96 raid on the Boer republic?

Kipling revealed the inspiration in his posthumous memoir Something of Myself.

Two lines of 'If—' about 'Triumph and Disaster' are inscribed above the players' entrance at which venue?

The poem topped a 1996 BBC poll as Britain's favourite, with twice the votes of the runner-up.

'If—' first appeared in which 1910 collection of stories and poems?

It followed the story 'Brother Square-Toes' and was framed as advice to Kipling's son John.

Gunga Din, of the famous line 'You're a better man than I am', works as what in the British Indian army?

The regimental bhishti saves the wounded narrator's life and is shot dead for his trouble.

'Mandalay', 'Gunga Din' and 'Danny Deever' were collected in which 1892 volume?

Most of the poems had first appeared individually in 1890.

The poem 'Mandalay' is set in which colony, then part of British India?

Its 'old Moulmein pagoda' is in modern Mawlamyine; Frank Sinatra later sang a version the Kipling family disliked.

In 'The Man Who Would Be King', Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan set out to rule which remote region?

Freemasonry is a key plot device; Sean Connery and Michael Caine played the pair in John Huston's 1975 film.

Kipling's Captains Courageous follows a rich boy rescued by a schooner off which grounds?

Harvey Cheyne Jr. spends a season aboard the We're Here; Spencer Tracy won an Oscar in the 1937 film.

In which year did Kipling become the first English-language Nobel literature laureate?

At 41 he remains the youngest literature laureate ever.

Which two British honours did Kipling turn down?

He was sounded out for the Laureateship and, several times, for a knighthood, and declined both.

Which house in Burwash, East Sussex, built in 1634, was Kipling's home from 1902 until his death?

He wrote Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies there, rooted in the Sussex landscape.

Kipling spent his winters from 1898 to 1908 in a house on whose estate at Groote Schuur, near Cape Town?

'The Woolsack' is now a University of Cape Town student residence.

Kipling's only son John was killed in 1915 at which battle, serving with the Irish Guards?

John had been rejected by the Navy for poor eyesight; his grave was only confirmed by the CWGC in 2015.

Which phrase did Kipling suggest for the gravestones of unidentified war dead?

He also chose 'Their Name Liveth For Evermore' for the Stones of Remembrance and 'The Glorious Dead' for the Cenotaph.

What inscription did Kipling choose for the Cenotaph in Whitehall?

He joined Sir Fabian Ware's Imperial War Graves Commission partly in response to his son's death.

What Indian symbol appeared on the covers of many older Kipling editions until he ordered it removed?

It was an ancient sun sign for good luck; once the Nazis adopted it, Kipling had it dropped.

Kipling scripted the first ever Royal Christmas Message, broadcast in 1932 by which monarch?

It went out on the BBC's Empire Service.

Which French soldier's copy of Kim stopped a bullet, leading to a friendship with Kipling?

The book had been in his left breast pocket.

Where were Kipling's ashes interred after his death in January 1936?

He lies next to Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy; he died of a perforated duodenal ulcer at 70.

Kipling became a Freemason at about 20, below the usual minimum age, in a lodge in which city?

He celebrated the fraternity in the poem 'The Mother Lodge' and used its symbols in The Man Who Would Be King.

Kipling's first novel, The Light That Failed (1891), drew its heroine Maisie from which real woman?

He had fallen for Florence, a fellow boarder of his sister's, while still at school.

Which composer set 'Mandalay' to music in 1907, turning it into a widely sung ballad?

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's 'Mandalay Song' alludes to the poem.

The Nobel committee cited Kipling's writing on the manners and customs of which country?

He had visited Japan on his 1889 journey and again on his 1892 honeymoon.

Which Kipling poem for the 1897 Diamond Jubilee gave English the phrase 'lest we forget'?

He wrote it in the same period as 'The White Man's Burden' (1899); both caused controversy.

For how much did Kipling sell the rights to his six story volumes before leaving India in 1889?

Plain Tales from the Hills fetched just £50 more, plus six months' salary from The Pioneer in lieu of notice.

Which visiting British writer gave Kipling an extended golf lesson at Naulakha in Vermont?

He brought his clubs and stayed two days; Kipling took to the game, even practising with the local Congregational minister.

How much did Kipling pay in 1902 for Bateman's, its mill and 33 acres?

The 1634 house had no bathroom, no running water upstairs and no electricity, but he loved it.

Which Oxford professor nominated Kipling for the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature?

The citation praised his 'power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration'.

Kipling wrote 'The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer' in 1922 for a professor at which university?

Engineering graduates across Canada still receive an iron ring at the ceremony to remind them of their obligation to society.

Camp Mowglis, founded in 1903 with Kipling's blessing, sits on the shores of which New Hampshire water?

Elizabeth Ford Holt borrowed Jungle Book themes for the boys' camp, which the Kiplings followed with interest all their lives.