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Lead book review

Politics as Ripping Yarns: the breathless brio of Boris Johnson’s memoir

Like a cross between Aeneas and Biggles, our intrepid hero travels the world, endures a thousand ordeals and makes himself father of the world’s greatest city

12 October 2024

9:00 AM

12 October 2024

9:00 AM

Unleashed Boris Johnson

William Collins, pp.592, 30

It is, perhaps, hard to imagine a collaboration between Virgil and Captain W.E. Johns, a fusion of the Aeneid and Biggles Pulls It Off, but that is how Boris Johnson’s memoir reads. Our intrepid hero travels round the world, wooing Gulf potentates, sticking it to Vladimir Putin, snatching submarine contracts from under Emmanuel Macron’s snooty Gallic nose and then makes it home in time for some uniting and levelling up before settling down to a well-deserved glass of Tignanello.

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