Rudyard Kipling - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

Kipling kept writing until the early 1930s, but at a slower pace and with much less success than before. He died of a perforated duodenal ulcer on 18 January 1936 at the age of 70, two days before the death of George V. (His death had in fact previously been incorrectly announced in a magazine, to which he wrote, "I've just read that I am dead. Don't forget to delete me from your list of subscribers.")

The pallbearers at the funeral included Kipling’s cousin, the UK Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, and the marble casket was covered by a Union flag. Kipling was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, northwest London, and his ashes were buried in Poets' Corner, part of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey, next to the graves of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy.

In 2010 the International Astronomical Union approved that a crater on the planet Mercury would be named after Kipling – one of ten newly discovered impact craters observed by the MESSENGER spacecraft in 2008–9. In 2012, an extinct species of crocodile, Goniopholis kiplingi, was named in his honour, "in recognition for his enthusiasm for natural sciences".