© 2026 Northeast Indiana Public Radio
A 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Public File 89.1 WBOI

Listen Now · on iPhone · on Android
NPR News and Diverse Music
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Support for WBOI.org comes from:

British Embassy Apologizes For Humorous Tweet About Burning The White House

So much for water under the bridge: The British Embassy in the United States is apologizing for a tweet on Sunday in which it jokingly referred to the burning of the White House 200 years ago by the British.

Here's the original tweet:

Marie Harf, a deputy spokesperson for the State Department, acknowledged shortly thereafter that "#itsComplicated."

But after a barrage of tweets questioning the taste of the original tweet, the British Embassy issued an apology:

We'd go into the history of all of this, but our colleagues at All Things Considered did a spectacular job of that last week. Listen:

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

British Embassy Apologizes For Humorous Tweet About Burning The White House

Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.