Hard, medium and soft

Camilla talks about poo, poetry and the empire as well as her children Portia, Cressida and Freddie, and her dear, darling (and deceased) husband, Rupert.
Hong Kong (where Camilla lived as an ex-pat) ain’t Mandalay but her reference to Rudyard Kipling’s poem of the same name is close enough, in terms of mythologising the imperialist experience. Mandalay was the former capital of Myanmar, or Burma as it was called when it was a part of British India, ruled from Delhi from 1886 to 1937 (and then a separate British colony from 1937 to 1948).
The poem describes a cockney soldier reminiscing about his “freedom” (as a soldier occupying Myanmar…) in 1890. It is often, nowadays, criticised as an imperialist’s wet dream. It was interpreted into song by Sinatra (“On The Road To Mandalay”) with my favourite reworked line being “…there’s a Burma broad waiting for me”. Kipling’s family wasn’t too thrilled with the makeover apparently.
This character Camilla’s brother Bertie’s hero is the British writer George Orwell, best known for the great dystopian novel 1984 and Animal Farm. Orwell served as a British cop in the Indian Imperial Police force in Burma for five years and his first novel “Burmese Days” was published seven years later in 1934, with whiffs of Forster’s “A Passage to India” and Conrad’s “Lord Jim”. The novel’s characters served as different views of colonialism and the book describes the racist violence, corruption and shattering of lives of oppressed people as well as (to a comparatively diminished degree) the oppressors.
The tagline on the dust jacket of the first edition reads “Everyone knows that behind the glamorous front of the white man’s rule in the East there are things so evil, so shocking, so dangerous, that all officialdom strives to cover them up.” #imperialism #britishempire #hongkongexpat #expatliving #hongkonghistory #actor_jg

[@embartrum8036]

Evocative, convincing and peppered with poo jokes. Splendid

[@iamsorryforyourlost]

😂😂😂 thank you so much “peppered with poo jokes” - the onomatopoeia of it!

[@lauraclarke3938]

So brilliant 😊

[@iamsorryforyourlost]

Thank you Laura!!!! ❤

[@DanielRLuke]

Maestra

[@iamsorryforyourlost]

Thank you Daniel!!!!! ❤❤❤