Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling, born in Bombay, was the youngest writer ever to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1907). The Jungle Book made him a household name, but his poem "If—" made him immortal: written as advice to his son, it is routinely voted Britain's favourite poem.

"If—" hangs above the players' entrance to Centre Court at Wimbledon: "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same."