M y father grew up in Africa. He loved Rudyard Kipling—and the Just So stories especially. On his shelves, there was a handsome uniform edition of Kipling’s works, with dark-burgundy dust jackets. My father was an actor for a while, and when he read to me from Kipling, you could hear something of the actor he had been in his voice. He relished the cadences of those stories.
Was he remembering his childhood—his father reading to him in 1950s Johannesburg, the landscape of Africa—while, in 1980s Surrey, he invoked “the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees” or described Yellow-Dog Dingo’s skittering pursuit through the bush? Was he remembering being playfully so cautioned himself when, in “How the Whale Got His Throat,” he admonished his small audience: “You must not forget the suspenders, Best Beloved.”
