I think Kipling's writing polarises opinion.

My own opinion, for what it's worth, is that he was of his time but - more interestingly than that - he was one of the few British authors of that period to write with a keen understanding of, and sympathy for India and its culture. "Kim" is a case in point, and we tend to forget that, when he was a young writer in India, his stuff like "Plain Tales From The Raj" was considered subversive and "not the thing".

The casual, accepted racism or anti-semitism or anti-feminism of a particular period is not acceptable today, but understandable in its time. I quite like some of the stuff by Dorothy Sayers and J.B. Priestley, but dislike the casual anti-semitism which comes through now and then.