Boris Johnson: A Life in Literature

Both here in Britain and across the Atlantic, we are blessed to be led by Renaissance Men. They may not strut about in tights and ruffs, have predilections for beheading heretics or enjoy marrying their cousins, but both Boris Johnson and Donald Trump are polymaths of many talents. They are far from just politicians. They are business magnates, magazine editors and reality TV stars. Not for them the stolid world of PPE, the Spado-cracy and the long, hard climb up the greasy pole so beloved of some of our friends in the Union. The Prime Minister and President have instead made their names in the public spheres. They have won their fame and fortune first and foremost among the ordinary man and woman, not the droids of SW1. We know them as characters: entertainers, lovers and possessors of interesting hair.

But whilst it is all very well that our 21st century Da Vincis are men with a staggering number of impressive strings to their bows, it must be admitted that the achievements of our Prime Minster are of a different calibre to the Orange-idiosyncrat that the Yanks prefer to a constitutional monarchy. In many ways they reflect natural characteristics.  Trump’s career is bombastic, show-offy and tinged with the American predilection for celebrity worship. When he produced a book it was The Art of the Deal. It is not for us to say how many words of the text are necessarily the President’s own, or if the allegation that he’s written more books than he has read is true. What is not in doubt is that our Prime Minister’s literary career is far more impressive.

It should be a matter of national pride that whereas the American President appeared on television fronting The Apprentice or cameo-ing on WWE, our PM fronted The Dream of Rome, a documentary charting the history of the Roman Empire. It is a sign of a man who did Classics at Oxford, rather than majoring in Business at some forgettable Philadelphian institution. It is the sign of a man who edited The Spectator rather than building casinos. It is the sign of a man who has written a number of witty, informative and distinctly idiosyncratic books. But where to start? Fortunately, I’ve read them, so you don’t have to. Here then is William’s guide to the burgeoning art of Boris-ography, and where one can start to get to grips with our Prime Minister’s peerless literary output. Some would say it has more collective quality than the complete works of Dickens or Shakespeare. Those people are mainly in Number 10, but they’re not too wrong.

Seventy-Two Virgins

Fear not, my fellow faint-hearted young Tories. This is no reference to the PM’s busy love life, but the title of his 2004 novel. Published in 2004, it rendered Boris the third PM to be a novelist after Disraeli and Churchill. It is obvious why they are his only two predecessors to have picked up the novelistic pen. All possessed a similar romantic, non-doctrinal Toryism. They all adapted with the shifting times and steered by a very sensible star: an undimmable faith in trusting the British people. It is thus unsurprising that Boris has, like Moses with his tablets, codified his philosophy for us here in book form. Even more to his credit, he managed to produce this book whilst also serving as MP for Henley, holding the position of Shadow Arts Minister, editing The Spectator and conducting an affair with Petronella Wyatt. The man’s stamina is simply Olympian.

What’s the book about? Boris, essentially. It follows Roger Barlow, a clumsy, floppily-coiffured MP with a passion for cycling who attempts to foil an Islamist attack on the visiting President of the United States. He wants to do so in order to distract from a scandal involving his financial entanglement in an establishment retailing lingerie. Following The Spectator’s example, it gives arguments for all sides of  the Iraq War and doesn’t take the subtlety of its politics too seriously. It’s as if P G Wodehouse wrote an episode of The West Wing. For its sheer sense of shameless self-promotion and its challenge to political correctness, it is an unmissable example of what makes the PM so much more likeable than the rest of the bland careerists found in Westminster, the Union and Spirited Discussions.

Friends, Voters, Countrymen: Jottings on the Stump

From 2001, this is a junior effort by a young Johnson describing his election as MP for Henley. As an example of good journalism, engaging-writing and basic Boris-isms, it is a good, if incomplete, early effort. Best purchased at charity shops, I would imagine, and useful for preparing for your eventual campaign to win a safe Tory seat.

Lend Me Your Ears/ Have I Got Views For You

Here we have a collection of the Prime Minister’s columns for various newspapers, the earlier from 2003 and the latter from 2008. There is cross over, obviously, so I’d suggest going for the latter. What we have here is a young Boris defining his political identity and beliefs in his writing just as Disraeli did with Sybil and Conginsby. Whereas Disraeli may have spoken of the two nations of the rich and the poor, Boris speaks of something much more pressing: liberty. Liberty to hunt what one wants, to eat what one wants, to cycle where one wants. Liberty from pesky thieves, liberty from crappy teachers and liberty from being bombed from 10,000 feet. Well, in some cases: Boris began as a sceptic on the Kosovo intervention of the late 90s but changed his mind. In these very pages you can see the avidity of his support for the war in Iraq. Perhaps history will vindicate the policy of bombing states into democracy. But probably not.

Nevertheless, reading Boris’ description of the American Imperium is worth the cost of purchase alone. But that’s not the end of the amusement. The PM describes writes about a cornucopia of topics, from dancing with actresses in nightclubs, the appeal of Tony Blair and the need for Classical education in our state schools. It is a shame that some of his earlier libertarianism appears to have been dimmed by his time in Downing Street, as shown by his new obesity announcement. But he’s still a damn sight better than the myopic authoritarianism of Theresa May, so we can’t won’t quibble.

The Dream of Rome

I am a historian, not a Classicist. Despite a misprint in a recent Oxford Blue article, I do not speak Latin. My knowledge of the classical and late antique worlds is limited and it is deeply embarrassing.  I needed a primer. This provides that, with all the knowledge and humour you would expect from someone who got a 2:1 at Balliol.  

Erudite, engaging and enveloped by a sense of the author’s love for the subject and passion for writing, this is a book that will have any non-specialist as pumped up about the peoples of the Roman Empire as it is possible to get. A romp, no doubt about it – it owes as much to Life of Brian as Edward Gibbon. But it is a romp with (semi)-serious messages about the European Union and what it lacks its dormouse-eating predecessor from two millennia ago. Those who doubt the Prime Minster’s Brexiteering credentials should look no further. More importantly, the updated version contains new areas on the rise of Islam, which as well as introducing wider audiences to a little-understood period. More importantly, it greases BoJo’s liberal credentials: it serves as a warming reminder of the need for religious tolerance in a world huddled under the threat of extremism. A terrific read. But not as terrific as the one after next.

The One before the One After the Next One After The Dream of Rome:

Johnson’s Life of London

Pro-London guff. Avoid.

The One After the One After The Dream of Rome, also known as The Next One After the One After The Dream of Rome:

The Churchill Factor

Have you seen Darkest Hour? Marvellous film. Gary Oldman captures Churchill superbly. He is equal part blubbing and imperious. It gives you a good sense of being there in Parliament and the War Cabinet in the grim days of 1940. For those who aren’t clued up on Hollywood, have you read Andrew Roberts’ recent biography of Churchill? Knocks Roy Jenkins’ one into a cocked hat. Funny, powerful and a real page-turner, it’s one of the best modern political biographies you’ll find. But it’s not the best. It’s not even the best on Churchill. That, my friends, is Boris Johnson’s The Churchill Factor.

You can hear the shrieks of professional historians and Churchill aficionados in response to that. The former are terrified that one could praise a book designed so obviously a hagiography for a man they view as beyond the pale, written by one who elicits much the same emotions. But I have to assume that all of us here at OUCA are wise enough to know he was the greatest man who ever lived. Boris, for context, is most likely the fourth (after Ronald Reagan and Freddie Mercury). We side with the Churchill aficionados on that front, but disagree when it comes to the strength of the author and his text. The chattering classes of Churchillians didn’t like this book. Admittedly, BoJo’s flaws are plain to see. His scholarship lacks robustness, his tone is often humorous, and the work cannot escape the sense that the author is writing it in order to bolster his credentials in comparison to David Cameron. But all those are signs of a typical journalist and politician – if I wanted a book by a professional historian I could easily go and find one. It is the idiosyncrasies and Boris-isms that lift this work from being a simple work of hackery to an all time great.

Hyperbole? Not possible, when one is dealing with a subject and an author this important. What Boris achieves in 300 or so pages is to exquisitely capture what made Churchill great. His descriptions of those Cabinets in 1940 are stellar. You are in the room as Winston, through sheer force of personality, sets the government’s mind on holding out against the Nazis. You are there as a backbencher as he tells us to fight them on the beaches and on the landing grounds. You are watching on awe as those Spitfires and Messerschmitts fly overhead, deciding the future of human freedom. Here Boris’ talents as a journalist and wordsmith shine through at their best – nobody could have better showed why Churchill was so important, and why we all owe him a debt.

But it is not just the conscious sense of showing two-fingers to left-wing nonsense that makes this Bojo’s magnum opus. More than any other work he has produced, this shows Johnson’s approach to politics. He backs Churchill as a Tory radical, a backer of free trade, social reform and standing up for human rights across the world. I remember re-reading it in the days before he became PM and knowing at that point I’d made the right choice in voting for him. In comparing himself to Churchill, Boris gets more right than his critics in the media would like to admit. Both have often been hated by their party hierarchies; both are liberals at heart; and both have risen to the challenge of a national crisis. Writing this book, I wager, was the best prep the Prime Minister could have had for the horrors of Coronavirus. For all our sakes, that’s no bad thing.

So, that’s a summary of the books of Boris. They are brilliant and bonkers. What they do is make you proud to be a Tory, and proud to be British. How many other world-leaders have written these many books? Asides from Barack Obama’s various boring pieces of self-promotion, I can’t think of any others. What a joy that our PM is an author, a humour-ist and a darn funny bloke. Whatever his struggles, we’re lucky to have him. And while we’re locked in, we’re lucky to have his books.

William Atkinson is a second year reading History at Christ Church