Mandalay (poem)
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"Mandalay" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling, written and published in 1890, and first collected in Barrack-Room Ballads, and Other Verses in 1892. The poem is set in colonial Burma, then part of British India. The protagonist is a Cockney working-class soldier, back in grey, restrictive London, recalling the time he felt free and had a Burmese girlfriend, now unattainably far away.
Moulmein from the Great Pagoda, Samuel Bourne, 1870
An "old Moulmein pagoda", a Buddhist stupa on a hilltop at Mawlamyine
"Where the old flotilla lay". British soldiers disembarking from paddle steamers in Mandalay on 28 November 1885 during the Third Anglo-Burmese War.
The British at the palace in Mandalay in the Third Anglo-Burmese War, The Illustrated London News, 1887
Rudyard Kipling
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Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work.
Kipling in 1895
Malabar Point, Bombay, 1865
English Heritage blue plaque marking Kipling's time in Southsea, Portsmouth
Lahore Railway Station in the 1880s