With an eye for the telling domestic anecdote, Ricketts refuses to let Kipling have the last word on his own life, constantly pointing up the inconsistencies in Kipling's political positions and actions and locating the impetus for Kipling's obsession with hatred and orphanhood in his troubled chilldhood. Drawing heavily on letters and newspapers as well as Kipling's own personal and professional writings, Ricketts conjures up Rud's multiple worlds--from the Burne-Jones's cultural gatherings to a vivid fin-de-siecle Lahore to his latter, painful days in Sussex. With an admirable ability to move from Indian politics to family gossip within a paragraph, Ricketts gives us a Kipling whose complex life now demands a reconsideration of his work. --Alan Stewart