The foreign secretary flew to Bengal and was feted. This is life as those who yearn for a new global order imagine it
Illustration by Matt Kenyon.
Fresh from Theresa May’s new “global Britain” – “a country that goes out into the world to build relationships with old friends and new allies alike” – Boris Johnson turned up last week in Kolkata. People seemed drawn to his size. His host, West Bengal’s chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, spoke of him as a “big man” in the British government. A Kolkata daily, the Telegraph, carried pictures of him playing cricket with the children of the Bournvita Cricket Academy and answering a question from students at Presidency University: “Boris big with bat & words” was the headline.
The reports were affectionate. Johnson may be many things – a fraud, a ruthless careerist, a mountebank – but the fact is that foreigners smile when they say his name – “Boris!” – even, or perhaps especially, the people of Bengal, or at least that fairly large section of them who grew up with PG Wodehouse, whose novels have delighted the Kolkata elite, the bhadralok, over several generations. (And here I don’t simply repeat a ready-made generalisation. I know it from experience. Some years ago we were having a household dispute about how long it would take to reach Shropshire by train. “About two hours 30 minutes from Paddington,” said a young Bengali visitor who had never been to England before. We asked how on earth he would know, to have the calm reply: “That’s how long it took to reach Blandings.”)
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