POLITICS AND SOCIETY
31 May 1902
End of 2nd Boer War.
Kipling was unquestioning, not to say fanatic, in his support of British policies in southern Africa (Kipling Society).
10 October 1903 Women’s Social and Political Union established.
‘From the lowest to the highest, the driving force of the suffrage agitation comes (a) from the surplus who, consciously or unconsciously want a man and don’t care a curse for the politics (b) from the women without power to hold or charm the man they’ve got’ (Kipling).
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8 April 1904 Entente Cordiale signed between France and Britain.
‘You must understand I had several times drunk to the entente cordiale in sweet champagne at eleven in the morning on the deck of the Dupleix; temperature beneath her awnings about 85° F.’ Souvenirs of France, 1915.
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6 May 1910 Edward VII is succeeded by George V
King and author became personal friends.
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11 April 1912 Liberals propose Home Rule for Ireland
Poem ‘Ulster’ published 9th April; supports the Protestant cause.
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28 June Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated in Sarajevo.
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4 August 1914 Britain declares war on Germany in response to invasion of Belgium.’
The Outlaws’ poem published December 1914. Germans are barbarians.
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23 August 1914 British Expeditionary Force (BEF) meets German army at Mons.
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31 August 1914
1st Battle of Ypres.
‘For all we are’ published in The Times on 2nd September.
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27 September 1915 Battle of Loos.
John Kipling reported ‘missing’.
Short stories Mary Postgate and Sea Constables published.
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27 January 1916 Conscription introduced.
Kipling had long campaigned for national service.
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29 April 1916
British garrison at Kut-al-Amara surrenders to the Turks.
Kipling’s protest poem ‘Mesopotamia’ published in July 1917 in response to this.
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31 May 1916
Battle of Jutland.
The Battle of Jutland was described by Rudyard Kipling in his series of reports in the London Daily Telegraph, October 19, 23, 26, 31,1916.
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15 September 1916
Tanks used for 1st time by British.
Referred to as ‘creepy-crawlies’ or ‘hush-hush-birds’ in Kipling’s Irish Guards history (1923).
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1 February 1917
Germans declare unrestricted submarine warfare.
Poem ‘Submarines’ by Kipling is set to music by Edward Elgar.
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11 November 1918
Armistice.
12th Nov. They only got the news today by the ringing of church bells. Rud to the village to hear our church bell. A world to be remade without a son.13th Nov. Rud and I feel as never before what it means now the war is over to face the world to be remade without a son. Carrie Kipling’s diary.
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10 April 1919
British soldiers kill unarmed Indian civilians at Amritsar.
Kipling described General Dyer as ‘the man who saved India’.
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1 October 1932
Oswald Mosley founds British Union of Fascists.
Kipling described Mosley as "a bounder and an arriviste."
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11 April 1935
Italy, France and Britain meet to discuss German re-armament.
Kipling was a firm opponent of German re-armament.
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18 January 1936
Rudyard Kipling dies, aged 70.
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20 January 1936
Death of George V.