This Week, Once Again, It Will Be Named Britain's Favourite Poem. But Few Know the Remarkable Story Behind Kipling's If -- And the Swashbuckling Renegade Who Inspired It
Daily Mail › February 16, 2009
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Summary
THIS week, Rudyard Kipling's If, that epic evocation of the British virtues of a 'stiff upper lip' and stoicism in the face of adversity, will once again be named as the nation's favourite poem.
The choice will certainly reignite the debate about whether it is, in fact, a great poem -- which T. S. Eliot insisted it was not, describing it instead as 'great verse' -- or a 'good bad' poem, as Orwell called it.See the full content of this document
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This Week, Once Again, It Will Be Named Britain's Favourite Poem. But Few Know the Remarkable Story Behind Kipling's If -- And the Swashbuckling Renegade Who Inspired It
Indeed, when it was last acclaimed as our favourite 14 years ago, one newspaper dismissed it as 'jingoistic nonsense', while another praised it as 'unforgettable'.
What is not in doubt is that Kipling's four eight-line stanzas of advice to his son, written in 1909, have inspired the nation for a century.Two of its most resonant lines, 'If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same', stand above the players...See the full content of this document
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