The problem for Johnson is that after reflecting on the stirring poetry, you have to actually rise up to match it

It was happening well before COVID-19 came to our shores, but with the combustible combination of a pandemic-induced lockdown and images of police brutality from the US also thrown in, the head popping has gone into overdrive.Īdmittedly, keeping your head is challenging when wrestling with complexities such as white privilege and white supremacy, or if you feel someone has said something wrong, deeply offensive, or just plain bonkers, or when you wake up to the morning news that the singing of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” at rugby matches might be banned due to its “historical context.”

There has been a lot of head losing going on. This line alone justifies the price of the ticket. If you can keep your head when all about you For throughout the lockdown and now, as we tie ourselves in knots over how to ease it while also protesting and rioting over Black Lives Matter, I’ve been struck by just how much his (in)famous poem “If” reverberates with valuably relevant and humane advice which we could all do well to remember (on YouTube there is a very nice reading of “If” by the actor Michael Caine, who also explains why the poem resonates so much for him): Even before the UK’s current reckoning over race relations, Rudyard Kipling had become one of the most sexist dead white men among a sizeable roster-perhaps nudged into second by Cecil Rhodes-his views deemed utterly out of touch, with the man scorned as a table thumping, flag waver for the imperial and racist wrongs of the past that are roiling our nation now.Īnd yet, Kipling appears back on trend with a vengeance (and perhaps he always has been on a host of matters).

You will be a man my son