Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in India in1865 to British parents, and brought by a Portuguese 'ayah' (nanny) and an Indian servant, who would entertain him with fabulous stories and Indian nursery rhymes. He was sent back to England when he was seven years old, and lived in a boarding house with a couple who were cruelly strict. Fortunately he returned to India aged 16, to work as the assistant editor of a newspaper in Lahore. He began publishing stories and poems and eventually had great success with his book Plain Tales from the Hills. After his marriage Kipling settled in America, and it was here that he wrote The Jungle Book. He then moved with his family to England, where he wrote Just So Stories for his daughter Josephine who tragically died of pneumonia. Rudyard Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 and died on 18 January 1936.

The Jungle Book was one of those rare books that I felt I was actually living as I read it