Old Anglo Indian Books

For bibliophiles mainly. Conversations with Walter Hingley prompted me to bring out my favorite old fishing book: a copy of Thomas’s The Rod in India that I got from fishing writer Datus Proper, with its gold embossed figure of an Indian angler and a mahseer on the cover.* (Click all to enlarge).The mahseer was sometimes …

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On taking Kipling seriously

Kipling, perhaps because of his (perceived) politics, still “can’t get no respect” from middlebrow critics and the kind of hacks who enjoy making up dismissive one- liners. He has fewer problems with actual readers– he is never out of print– or serious critics; in addition to the ones mentioned below, good recent essays on him …

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Kipling Goshawk

As mentioned below, Rudyard Kipling’s father John Lockwood Kipling, artist and museum curator, wrote a book on Indian animals (Man and Beast in India, 1892) which includes a bit on falconry. Here is HIS gos.

More Far Away- and Great First Lines

“He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam- Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib- Gher– the Wonder House, as the natives called the Lahore Museum”. The opening lines of Kim, of course. My friend Grayal Farr, formerly of the Special Forces, naturalist, archaeologist, and fellow Kiplingite (see Kipling’s “The …

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