Charles Allen Lecture on Kipling

The Haileybury Lectures: Charles Allen on Kipling
Thursday 18 September 2014, 7.30pm

Distinguished author Charles Allen gives a lecture entitled Ruddy and the Raj: India and the making of Rudyard Kipling. This is the first in a series of lectures which celebrate the life and work of six distinguished members of the Haileybury community.

". . . I’m in love with the country and would sooner write about her than anything else, my own place, where I find heat and smells of oil and spices, and puffs of temple incense, and sweat and darkness, and dirt and lust and cruelty, and above all, things wonderful and fascinating innumerable".

Nineteen-year-old Ruddy Kipling, writing to his cousin Margaret from Lahore in September 1884

About Charles Allen

Haileybury is delighted that the eminent historian Charles Allen has kindly agreed to give this landmark lecture. Few are better qualified to talk about Rudyard Kipling in India than Charles Allen, best known for such books as Plain Tales from the Raj, Soldier Sahibs, The Buddha and the Sahibs and Ashoka: the Search for India’s Lost Emperor. Born in India in the twilight years of the British Raj, Allen experienced an early childhood very similar to the one enjoyed by Kipling several generations earlier. Subsequently, Allen has lived and travelled in virtually every corner of the Indian sub-continent. His fascination with Kipling in India has its roots in a strong family connection, since it was his great-grandfather who gave the sixteen-year-old Ruddy Kipling his first job, as assistant editor on a provincial newspaper in Lahore.

All welcome & entrance is free. Contact Haileybury Box Office to reserve your place.