Myanmar, Bagan

Boris Johnson, Britain’s foreign secretary, yesterday started reciting lines from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Mandalay” while inside a Myanmar temple during an official visit to the former British colony. He was on a live mic (and on camera) at the time, being filmed for a Channel Four documentary; the British ambassador, Andrew Patrick, who was chaperoning Johnson on the visit to Yangon’s sacred Shwedagon Pagoda, was quick to remind him that citing from the colonial-era poem was inappropriate. Here’s the poem in full: Continue reading →