How Kipling helped quell an Indian mutiny in first world war trenches

British intelligence enlisted Jungle Book author to counter German propaganda by rewriting soldiers’ letters home

He was one of Britain’s most celebrated writers of the 20th century, the Nobel prizewinning author of The Jungle Book. But Rudyard Kipling’s work for British intelligence during the first world war has been lost in the mists of time.

Now new research has highlighted the extraordinary role the author of Kim and the poem If played in pushing out pro-empire propaganda designed to temper the threat of an insurrection among Indian soldiers fighting in France.

Related: Rudyard Kipling’s writing enjoyed by Indians | Brief letters

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