Tim Radford on how Kipling marked the burial of King Edward VII

On 20 May, 1910, Edward VII is buried at Windsor and in Sussex, a best-selling author and poet writes to his son, at school. “Dear old man, This has been one of the most wonderful days that ever I remember. In the first place it was the first day of real summer weather – hot but not too hot with a wind that drove away the thunder-clouds.

“In the second place it was more of a Sunday than anything you could imagine. Last night was hot and sultry with bright white lightning, winking and flashing far away towards the East; now and then one heard (I was up about 2am to listen to it) a low growl of thunder and then the rain fell as a steady warm drip,” he writes in Oh Beloved Kids: Rudyard Kipling’s Letters to His Children, edited by Elliot Gilbert (1983).