O beloved kids: Rudyard Kipling's letters to his children - Rudyard Kipling

Anyone who is familiar with The Jungle Book and the Just So Stories will be aware that Rudyard Kipling derived great inspiration and happiness from children. Uncomfortable in the limelight after achieving international literary fame and success, by far his most treasured role became that of father to his three children, two of whom died at a tragically young age. It was for John, Elsie, and Josephine – "his dear people", as he called them, that he invented the magical stories that have delighted generations of children for over a century.

Over a period of nine years, from 1906 to 1915, Kipling wrote a series of letters to his beloved "Babes". Signed variously "Daddo", "Pater" and "Thy Parent", the letters reveal the same imagination, verve, and wit as Kipling's fictional works and cover everything from hygiene to spelling, news from home, as well as brilliantly graphic descriptions of travel in Europe, Egypt and Canada. Many of the letters are liberally peppered with impromptu pen and ink sketches, humorous stories and poems.

Perhaps the most moving are those letters written by Kipling to his son John, who, as a young officer fighting in France during the First World War, was to be killed in the trenches in 1915 only a few weeks before his eighteenth birthday. These letters offer an unprecedented glimpse into the relationship between father and son. After John died the fatherly scrawls of affection came to an abrupt end, as Kipling would never forgive himself for having encouraged his son to enlist.