Speak the culture britain be fluent in b 94

2.1.5 Success stories: modern British literature In praise of Kipling In 1907 poet, novelist and short story writer Rudyard Kipling became the first English language writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature He remains the youngest man to take the prize – he was 41 Kipling later rejected a knighthood and the Poet Laureate job In search of the new: Modernism Writers in the early 1900s responded to the changing world The old certainties of the universe seemed to have slipped: Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) was questioning the Old Testament, the cast-iron layers of society appeared suddenly fluid and Freud was poking around in the subconscious It all contributed to the growth of Modernism and, in literature, to tireless innovation British literature continued to flourish but most writers followed their own path, rarely beholden to any wider movement Increasingly they turned inward, losing that confident, structured sense of the external world and dealing instead with the more personal experiences and emotions of the individual Five early 20th century novelists that stick in the memory Rudyard Kipling An Englishman born in Bombay, Kipling set his books during the Raj Some have condemned his accounts of India under British rule as racist; others suggest he was being satirical Most, however, are agreed on Kipling’s gift for narrative The Jungle Books (1894 and 95) and Kim (1901) were his best novels E.M Forster Forster’s fluid prose framed England’s failure to create colonial utopia in A Passage to India (1924) His earlier novels, A Room with a View (1908) and Howards End (1910), detailed clashes of a different kind, between protocol and abandon, materialism and spirituality 84 Identity: the foundations of British culture Literature and philosophy Art, architecture and design Performing arts Cinema, photography and fashion Media and communications Food and drink Living culture: the state of modern Britain