'Not appropriate,' envoy tells Britain's Boris over Kipling poem in Myanmar

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

#WORLD NEWS SEPTEMBER 30, 2017 / 2:21 PM / UPDATED 44 MINUTES AGO

'Not appropriate,' envoy tells Britain's Boris over Kipling poem in Myanmar

Reuters Staff
2 MIN READ

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s ambassador to Myanmar was forced to interrupt Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson earlier this year as he tried to recite a nostalgic colonial poem by Rudyard Kipling in public during a visit to the country’s most famous Buddhist site.

Johnson, who helped lead the Leave campaign in the 2016 Brexit referendum, is caught on camera starting to recite Kipling’s poem, Mandalay, after striking a bell at the Shwedagon pagoda in Yangon.

“The temple bells they say,” Johnson says in television footage by Channel 4. “Come you back, you British soldier.”

As Johnson continues with his recitation of the poem which celebrates a soldier’s love affair with a local woman during Britain’s colonial rule of what was then known as Burma, the ambassador tenses.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-myanmar-johnson/not-appropriate-envoy-tells-britains-boris-over-kipling-poem-in-myanmar-idUSKCN1C50PM

[TubbersUK]

1. He's a utter buffoon n/t

[shenmue]

2. What an idiot