London Museum apologizes to Bulgaria for the blunder with the "Macedonian" inscription


British Museum officials apologized to the Bulgarian Embassy in London and changed the scandalous inscription under the Tetraevalgelia of Vidin
Photo: Archives of Standart

Do you remember how grandfather Liben, the character of Bulgarian writer Lyuben Karavelov, takes the mickey out of the citizens of the British Islands: "These are the oddest people on earth. I walk into a shop and ask the shop-keeper for a definite thing but he always gives me something different!" It seems that this is the case with the ill-fated inscription under the Tetraevangelia of Vidin exhibited in the Library of the London Museum. It is Bulgarian, on the one hand, but it is written in Macedonian Church Slavonic language! An absurdity that took aback all scientists.
After the rapid reaction of the Bulgarian diplomats in England, the British museum delivered their apologies about the scandalous inscription under the Tetraevangelia of Vidin, sources from Bulgaria's mission in London informed Standart yesterday.
Extending apologies for mistakes is a European way of behaviour. Let's hope that this is Britain's last trick on Bulgaria.
Because, the not-so-good relations between the citizens of the UK and those on the Balkan Peninsula go back quite a long way. If not between the common citizens of Her or His Britannic Majesty but as regards those who define Britain's policy.
10 Downing Street has had a negative attitude towards Bulgaria since the times of the Ottoman Empire. In connection with the suppression of the April Uprising, the then British PM, Beaconsfield, most cynically states in the British Parliament that it is much better to sacrifice 100,000 people but defend the interests of Britain. Exactly due to these interests, Bulgaria was broken up small according to the Treaty of San Stefano and now Bulgaria has certain problems with Macedonia. Later on, the British politicians became the most fervent supporters of the Union of Eastern Rumelia with the Bulgarian Principality.
Winston Churchill gibed at the Bulgarians for having a bath only once a week and that the Bulgarians say "Congratulations" to each other after a shower. Churchill branded the Bulgarians ungrateful and in 1944 he gave Bulgaria away to Stalin as a punishment - to build up socialism.
But even these days, official London continues regarding the Bulgarians as second-rate people, who have to be supervised and admonished - just like colonial subjects. Recently, former Bulgaria's PM, Dimitar Popov, most responsibly admitted that in 1991, a British Ambassador demonstrated a complete misconduct towards him as if he was an aboriginal chieftain and ordered him to register the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) - a predominantly Turkish party.
Even now, Tony Blair's cabinet - professedly a socialist cabinet, is causing big troubles to the Bulgarians. First came the so "precious and unattainable" visas for the UK, followed by the quotas and then the deafening cries in the British media how Bulgarian bandits and prostitutes were to flood Britain after Bulgaria's Accession to the EU.
English tabloids branded the Bulgarians the new Huns. Bulgaria itself was regarded like something average between the Far West from the 19th century and today's Near East.
Britain's biggest tabloid The Sun first released the lie how Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants were spreading AIDS in the UK.
Before that, there were several other attempts to blacken Bulgaria. Three reporters from News of the World travelled day and night around Bulgaria in an unsuccessful try to find a Bulgarian prostitute who was supposed to tell them about her dead-set intentions to settle down in the UK after Bulgaria's EU Accession and sell her flesh in London downtown.
At the same time, British media publish nothing of how Bulgarian anti-mafia policemen seized Englishman O'Connell, who came to Bulgaria to racketeer his compatriot and entrepreneur Jonathan Thurston.
But when it comes to selling stolen masterpieces at Christie's, as it was the case with the ancient silver dish, the attitude towards Bulgaria chances completely and from barbarians the Bulgarians become the center of the human civilization.
The consolation is that the common Britons get much better orientated than their rulers and they settle permanently in many Bulgarian villages. Admiring Bulgaria's national drink - Rakia and the Shopska salad.