After Rudyard's illness in 1926 Bland-Sutton (his doctor) recommended a long sea voyage which enabled him to realize an old dream. He had written in Just So Stories: `I'd love to roll to Rio, some day before I'm old', and, after nearly twenty years of absence from the tropics, he crossed the line again in 1927 on a voyage to Brazil, taking the deepest interest in his fellow passengers, mostly Spaniards and Portuguese. With some firmness he detached himself from publicity, declining to become a guest of the nation; and revelled in the prospect of a race of Europeans, at home in a tropical climate, and busily engaged in pioneering a new country. Brazilian Sketches ... had the gusto of his early Letters of Marque, and were lightened with verses in his simplest, sincerest style.

Brazilian Sketches contains Rudyard Kipling's impressions, vivid, sharp and intuitive, of Brazil, largest and most diverse of the southern republics, and of the Brazilian people. The mind that observed so keenly the life of Asia and the Empire loses nothing of its power when trained on one of the greatest nations of the New World ... This book is inevitably a collector's item, but it is much more: a joy to read, a key to better understanding of our Pan-American neighbors.

I originally became aware of the possible existence of this work during my railway history research in Brazil. A fellow member of the Associagao Brasileira de Preservacao Ferroviaria in Sao Paulo mentioned that Rudyard Kipling had visited Brazil and the Sao Paulo Railway. However, this remained at the back of my mind until one day in 1986 a large envelope arrived containing a note from Peter J C Mosse in New York, together with a photocopy of a pre-war publicity brochure of the Sao Paulo Railway called "The Gateway to Sao Paulo"...

"The Gateway to Sao Paulo" contained an eight page description of the line, most of which was, not unnaturally, devoted to the Sierra Section. (For the uninitiated, this is a remarkable and, given its scale, unique 2000 foot climb by a main line railway using cable haulage. It was too steep for locomotives, and is described by Kipling in his sixth letter: "Railways and a Two- Thousand-Feet Climb".

I very much felt that this was a work which should be resurrected to help increase the British awareness of Brazil. Of all our former trading partners, Brazil has been most forgotten since our withdrawal from the world after the Second World War... Let us hope that Kipling is still able to do his bit to improve Anglo-Brazilian relations.