Rudyard Kipling is perhaps the writer most associated with the final years of the British Empire. but he was a much more nuanced and reflective writer than is often appreciated. Born in India, he set many of his stories there. But he was remarkably prolific, writing scores of short stories (a genre which he is credited with pioneering), novels, poems and essays. 

The novelist Henry James described him as “the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known”. In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first English language writer to win.