Even though Rudyard Kipling died 70 years ago, listeners to Plain Tales from the Hills are sure to gain the beloved storyteller some new followers. I’m certainly joining the fan club. Never engrossed by ‘Gunga Din’, ‘If’ or ‘the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River’, I was astounded how quickly I became hooked on these stories — I’ve listened to the majority more than once.
This is early Kipling — he was only 23 when commissioned to write them for the Civil and Military Gazette, a local English-language newspaper for the British in northern India. He certainly evokes the full spectrum of emotions — laughter in ‘False Dawn’ when Saumerez (‘a strange man’) proposes marriage to the wrong Miss Copleigh (‘repellent and unattractive’) during a blinding dust storm, thinking her to be her prettier sister. Or by total contrast the poignant ‘Thrown Away’ where an over-sensitive young soldier is parted from his parents for the first time when sent to serve in India. His hitherto sheltered life yields a tragic outcome.
The reader is the ultra-dependable Martin Jarvis, whom surely Kipling would see as the kind of man to take on a couple of tigers singlehanded while recording yet another audiobook. Jarvis reads with such energy and concern that the stories sound as innovative and fresh as I’m sure they did when first penned.
As an avid follower of the turf my particular favourite was ‘The Broken-Link Handicap’, an ingenious tale of a nervy Australian jockey brought to an unscheduled halt by some vocal acro- batics that even Martin Jarvis would struggle to perform. The average time of each of the 24 stories is around ten minutes — ideal for a short, sharp fix of Kipling.
When Kipling died in 1926 the dapper David Niven was a high-spirited 16-year-old student, a bit of a prankster and most certainly a hit with the girls.
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