Reblogged from Smorgasbord:

Delighted to welcome Mike Biles, author of A Bit About Britain’s History as a guest writer until the end of the year. In his first post, Mike visits the home of author and poet Rudyard Kipling.

We travelled to Bateman’s, Rudyard Kipling’s Sussex home for 34 years, through the impossibly pretty village of Burwash, all whitewash and weatherboard. You reach the house down what Kipling described as “an enlarged rabbit-hole of a lane” to arrive in what is now a car park. I wondered how it had all looked when the Kiplings first saw, and fell in love with, the place.

“At very first sight the Committee of Ways and Means (Kipling and his wife, Carrie) said: ‘That’s her! The only She! Make an honest woman of her – quick!’ We entered and felt her Spirit – her Feng Shui – to be good. We went through every room and found no shadow of ancient regrets, stifled miseries, nor any menace, though the ‘new’ end of her was three hundred years old.”

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