Read a couple of Kipling's military-themed stories today. Both set during the 2nd Afghan War and deeply offensive in their politics. Yet both are brilliant evocations of the lives of the ordinary soldiers of the period. Not a hint of sentimentality in either and an intense awareness of the manifold faults of the hierarchies holding the colonial project together.
What an extraordinary writer and strange man he was! How fortunate we are to read him afresh in an age that is deeply unsympathetic to all that he believed in. We have the benefit of hindsight - but he had the benefit of a singular, unflinching grasp of detail.
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