OF all the great writers who lived in Sussex, none is more indelibly associated with the county than Rudyard Kipling, who spent the greater part of his life here.

Kipling achieved hero status equal to that of any pop star when he came to live at Rottingdean just before the turn of the century.

Indeed, it was the gawping crowds that eventually drove him away to the rural seclusion of Batemans, near Burwash.

Yet the irony was that once he moved there, his fame melted away and he became a forgotten figure of literature. Author Harry Ricketts notes in his new biography The Unforgiving Minute (Chatto and Windus £25) the sad decline in his reputation.

Although Thomas Hardy, who died in 1928, had the literary establishment acting as pallbearers for his funeral, when Kipling died eight years later not a single writer returned the compliment. What's more, his death was eclipsed by that of King George V two days later.

What was it that caused the decline which affected the second half of his life? It was partly fame and success. Like today's pop stars, Kipling became rich when young and the hunger to write disappeared.

Kipling was on the point of death through pneumonia in his early thirties. Had he expired then, nearly all his best-known work would still have survived. He continued writing until his death at 70 but never with the same urgency or popular appeal.

Then there were the personal tragedies that blighted his life. His beloved daughter Josephine died when only six and he never recovered from that. Even worse was to follow when his son John was reported missing in the First World War and the body was not found.

Kipling, when complimented on his wonderful house at Burwash, replied with tears in his eyes: "I used to think that I could not live anywhere else. But now there are no more laughing voices and running footsteps, so I don't care where I live; nothing really matters now."

Even in Edwardian times, he appeared old-fashioned and blimpish. His strident imperialism was out of tune with the slightly more relaxed regime ushered in by the new king once Queen Victoria had died. He became anti-Semitic and a great supporter of the unfavoured Conservative Party.

Kipling was also ill. Years of excessive smoking took their toll and he was afflicted by stomach trouble, ending in a duodenal ulcer which killed him.

Watched over by a highly-protective wife, he became nearly a Sussex recluse. Someone called him a bald-headed, bespectacled dwarf and, indeed, in one picture he looks the spitting image of that fictitious bigot Alf Garnett.

It would be wrong to portray Kipling's character as that caricature. Here was a man who also spoke for the ordinary soldier, captured the people's hearts through his early work and who refused every honour.

His books are read today, unlike those of some contemporaries, such as Arnold Bennett. His poem If has recently been voted the most popular of all time in a poll. Sussex by the Sea has become the county's own anthem.

Kipling could be infuriating, wrong-headed and occasionally unacceptable, but he coined memorable phrases that will outlast this century. How sad that the Poet Laureate of Sussex should have spent so many years in decline after such a glorious start.

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