Rudyard Joseph Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865 but spent most of his childhood in England. He returned to India in 1881 as a journalist and also wrote stories, sketches and poems. His literary reputation was established with Plain Tales from the Hills (1888). Today he is best remembered for The Jungle Book and Kim. He was the first English writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907. Before his retirement, Peter Keating was reader in English at Edinburgh. He is now a full-time writer.