It’s fun to quote Rudyard Kipling. He was a fine poet, though not a great one, and also a wonderful storyteller. His works include gems such as The Jungle Book, beloved by children and their parents for generations, wise and humane poems such as “If,” and entertaining novels such as Kim.

But he is also deeply unfashionable. That’s part of the pleasure of citing him. It twits the Left, whose disdain is perhaps greater for Kipling than for any other literary figure. He was a champion of colonialism and, committing the sin of being a man of his time, expressed prejudices beyond the pale of today’s censorious culture.