Something of Myself - Rudyard Kipling

I had a problem with this autobiography of the great (even Nobel Prizewinning) author of the late Victorian/Edwardian era.

It is only a slim volume, and yet it was very hard to read. Written in 1935, towards the end of his life Kipling reveals virtually nothing of himself (ironically in view of the tile)- and for an autobiography it is remarkably impersonal. It could just as easily have been written in the third person. We get nothing of his wife or children (his wedding day is referred to in a one sentence aside). Paradoxically Mr Kipling is sentimentally almost gushing about the debt he owed to his parents. The book also finishes effectively before the First World War and so makes no reference to the tragedy of Rudyard's son - medically unfit (extremely bad eyesight) for service and yet the rules were circumvented to enable him to be sent to his death in Flanders. There are the odd glimpses of life in India at the height of British rule, some fascinating comments on South Africa at the time of the Boer War, and interesting vignettes about life in America at the end of the nineteent century. But really this book is a curiosity rather than an entertainment. Rating: 5/10