Andrew Gimson returns with a penetrating and entertaining new account of Boris Johnson's turbulent time as prime minister,from the highs of a landslide election victory to the lows of his car-crash resignation.
In Boris Johnson: The Rise and Fall of a Troublemaker at Number 10,Gimson sets out to discover how a man dismissed as a liar,charlatan and tasteless joke was able,despite being written off more frequently than any other British politician of the twenty-first century,to become prime minister. During his ascent,Johnson benefited from being regarded as a clown,for this meant his opponents failed to take him seriously,while his supporters delighted in his ability to shock and enrage the Establishment. He even changed the language of politics; a new word,'cakeism',entered the English lexicon to describe his implausible but seductive claim during the Brexit negotiations that it was possible to have one's cake and eat it.
In a series of brilliant vignettes,Gimson sheds light on the parts played by sex,greed,boredom and low seriousness in Johnson's rise and fall,describes how Partygate fatally imperilled his prime ministership,and places him in a line of Tory adventurers stretching back to Benjamin Disraeli: disreputable figures who often blew themselves up,but who also could display an astonishing ability to connect with the British public.
What kind of a person is Johnson What kind of a country would dream of making him its prime minister And why did he fall Nobody has got closer than Gimson to finding out the answers.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster LtdISBN: 9781398502819Number of pages: 448Dimensions: 198 x 130 x 27 mm
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'Engaging,perceptive and often funny. Gimson,a former parliamentary sketch writer for the Daily Telegraph,has an eye for detail and a sense of the absurd... littered with entertaining and revealing vignettes'- Rachel Sylvester,The Times
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