This is a more varied collection in subject matter and tone than I had remembered from my first reading of it over 30 years ago. The writing is superb throughout; Kipling was a master craftsman and his prose is always a pleasure to read; the stories themselves I found more variable in quality.
Some common and deep-rooted Kipling themes are here, most notably insult revenged (e.g. The Honours of War and The Village That Voted The Earth Was Flat), and the ways of the English countryside “correcting” wayward thinking through their noble folk and ancient pursuits as in Friendly Brook and My Son’s Wife. Sometimes such correction is startlingly brutal and the pursuits include things like hunting, all of which may jar on the modern reader. So will the casual racism (the n-word is used twice in the book) and the anti-Semitism of the time, although these occur rarely and are no more than a reflection of contemporary attitudes; I think in this case they just need to be taken on the chin and accepted as historical fact, however unpleasant. Kipling also shows his deep respect for both Sikh soldiers and those whose families have worked the land for generations (in In The Presence and the poem The Land respectively) and a sympathy for addiction and mental illness in a couple of stories, which is at odds with the stiff-upper-lip atmosphere in which he grew up and which still prevailed.
Some stories are less good, I think. Regulus is a school story which could have been included in Stalky & Co, but doesn’t have the readability of those stories (and includes a long, long passage about translating Virgil in class which means little to most current readers, including me) and the opener, As Easy As A.B.C. is a sci-fi story investigating the meaning of freedom which didn’t really work for me. The closing two tales about the War during which they were written are both rather odd; Swept And Garnished features the ghosts of dead children, an over-sentimental aspect of Kipling I’ve never liked much, and Mary Postgate is a thoroughly ambiguous tale - but a very haunting one. I am still unsure about several aspects of it, but it has stayed with me over decades and it gripped and disturbed me all over again this time.
So...a bit of a mixed bag, but well worth reading is my overall verdict. I would also suggest that if you find you don’t like a story, just leave it and go on to the next; you don’t have to like everything, but I think there’s plenty here to enjoy.
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