Rudyard Kipling

You perhaps know by now, that I love history - and nothing more than a historical old time radio show. Joy ribs me all the time about how my brain has turned into an encyclopedia from the years of listening to shows on RUSC!

So you can imagine how excited I was to discover another historical series, called Lives of Great Men.

As the title suggests, it's a series about some of the great leaders in human progress, and which from the introduction promised to "build a story of civilization based on outstanding characters through the ages, and how each one influenced his own and future times."

Now I'll be honest, when I listened to the first show, I thought it sounded a little stuffy, but if you get past the initial introduction the content is really great! Each show features an historical figure, and the narrator (who is a rather no-nonsense lecturer called Dr Edward Howard Griggs), presents us with hundreds of fascinating and accurate facts in an engaging narrative which is both interesting and compelling. 

One of my favorite shows from the series is about Rudyard Kipling.

I'm sure everyone has heard of Rudyard Kipling, as the creator of The Jungle Book, a wonderful collection of stories about the fearless 'man-cub' Mowgli and his adventures in the Indian jungle alongside his companions Bagheera the black panther, and Baloo the bear.

There have been hundreds, possibly even thousands of different adaptations of The Jungle Book over the years, in books, audio, and motion pictures, but I have yet to find anything from the golden age of radio. 

There are, however, several old time radio shows featuring other stories written by Rudyard Kipling, such as The Phantom Rickshaw, The Light That Failed, The Man Who Would Be King, The Brushwood Boy, and Namgay Doola. I believe there are likely more too, so I'm going to go through his books, short stories and collections to see what else I can find, and I'll share these with you in the coming weeks.  

Happy listening my friends,