I had a slight shock last week, while listening to Desert Island Discs. The admirable nurse Dame Claire Bertschinger had chosen a reading of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ as one of her eight discs. The poem, beautifully read by Michael Caine, was nearing its climax when it came to an abrupt stop. If you do this and that and the other, what…? Nothing. The final stanza, with its punch-line (‘Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it/And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!’) had been lopped off. I quite see that the poem may be too long to read in its entirety, but it would have been easy to skip the penultimate stanza. Whoever removed the last lines must be illiterate. Or could it be that he or she feared that airing Kipling’s words might offend the sensibilities of the more gender-sensitive members of the audience?
My wonderful tennis coach Paul and his wife are having their first baby next month.
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