Kim Resources

This speech about Kipling was delivered by C.D. af Wirsén when the Nobel Prize Committee presented Kipling with his Nobel Prize in Literature on December 10, 1907. Kipling was the first English writer to receive this award.

Not only does this site unite Kipling fans online, but it also provides an incredibly useful collection of facts and online texts by and about Kipling.

As a liberal anti-imperialist, British author George Orwell (known for his novels 1984 and Animal Farm) really tears into Kipling in this fascinating essay. Though we don't totally agree with all aspects of his assessments of Kipling's work, Orwell raises a lot of fascinating points.

For more on the historical context of Kim, not only does this site include facts about the British colonization of India, but it also contains recommendations for further off- and online reading.

If you're looking for proof of Kipling's celebrity status as a poet of the British Empire, look no further than Westminster Abbey. Westminster Abbey is the place where all of the kings and queens of England have been crowned since the Norman invasion of 1066; it's also where a lot of England's most important political and artistic figures have been buried. Kipling's grave lies at the Abbey, next to famous English authors Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy.

Okay, we admit it: we're throwing this one in here because the title is hilarious. It's a short silent film based on Kipling's poem "The Vampire." Sadly, since it's so old and so silent that we'll probably never actually see it.

This film version of Kim stars the famously over-the-top actor Errol Flynn as Mahbub Ali, "the Red Beard"—which makes him sound ridiculously like a pirate. It also stars Dean Stockwell as young Kim.

We're including this one for the sake of completeness, but the IMDb entry tells us almost nothing about it—we're guessing that this adaptation didn't make a splash even when it was released over fifty years ago.

This TV movie stars Peter O'Toole as the lama, back when Hollywood thought it was okay to have white actors play other ethnicities in film (in case you're not sure—it's not okay now, and it wasn't okay then). Frankly, his makeup looks quite creepy.

Kipling lived in Sussex for much of his later life, so a lot of his personal correspondence and manuscripts have wound up at the University of Sussex Library.

This 2007 exhibition featured original photographs and manuscripts held at the Beinecke Library.

A roughly 46-minute-long bio on our boy Rudyard.

Alfred from The Dark Knight Rises lends his strangely awesome voice to reading Kipling poems aloud.

Yeah, this doesn't look like it takes a realistic or respectful attitude towards British India's many cultures—it's intensely racist at pretty much every turn.

We have to say—he's really rocking that giant mustache.