Critic after critic is dismissed as consumed by envy or pomposity — and yet where vision and empathy should be there is emptiness. It was then his “distant” second wife Marina’s fault for pursuing her own career and choosing to mother their four children. This is a compulsory read for all who wish for better in our country, so that we may forgive and support our prime minister rather than berate him, for we must put aside differences as much we can so as to improve all our lives.

makes excuse after excuse - his father was a womaniser, beat his mother in front of him, the children were forced to witness their mother being admitted to hospital with a nervous breakdown, etc. for all that, looked down on by them as an arriviste, someone who has only just recently bought himself into the club but who really doesn't have the pedigree.But that was long ago and if anyone expected his latest book to be an unsparing, detached appraisal of our Prime Minister, they will be disappointed.

Dynamic, intelligent and intensely social, he had a wide range of friends in Oxford, had already travelled across the world and was sufficiently impressive to be identified as a recruit for MI6, the foreign intelligence service. So if you were wondering, Johnson still comes off as a lascivious, self-serving creep even in a biography written by a mewling johnson sycophant. For all Bower’s eagerness to put a kind gloss on Johnson’s actions, he doesn’t flinch from the man’s record. It would be hard to imagine Churchill pleading that he could do no more than follow the guidance of his subordinates.And it is hard not to hear the Prime Minister’s self-excusing voice sounding throughout the narrative of his life.

Mais le plus captivant est sans doute la narration de l’incroyable, l’infaisable mise en œuvre et succès final du Brexit, que, semble-t-il, lui seul, pouvait mener à bout. That said, I have enjoyed some conservative commentators’ bewilderment at yesterday’s budget, but cakeism will inevitably turn into no treats for anyone unless he gets a grip. The problem from the beginning is Bower like the rest of the UK's 4th estate seems enamoured with BJ - from his messianic scrabble game at the age of 10 beating all takers to the bewildering acceptance of BJ's disregard for acceptable journalist practice.It’s very rare that I find a biography so hard to put down that I put away 300 pages in one weekend, but this one hit the spot! Boris is entertaining and fun, but not a man to lead a country selflessly in a principled and honest manner! But none of this should be understood as evidence of racism, which for Bower would be “unusual” in a man married “to a half-Indian woman”. Bowers appears to rely heavily on newspaper articles verified through interviews to piece together his account.

He takes no interest in his children’s upbringing, except to communicate a couple of life lessons: “If you’re working hard, don’t show it … show effortless superiority”; and “Nothing matters very much and most things don’t matter at all. A Sunday Times Book of the YearA Times Book of the YearA Guardian Book of the YearA Telegraph Book of the Year'EXPLOSIVE. The narrative then peters out in mid-2020, presumably when his publisher was demanding the final manuscript. This was borne out by what I read, and I can’t help feeling that this was a book rushed out for the Christmas 2020 market. It is symptomatic of the darkness of this book that makes you want to close it and never look at it again.

Started off very strong, then got gradually less engaging as Johnson actually ascended to power -- I found it hard to care about the ins and outs of London policy in particular. New Paperbacks NEW PAPERBACKS [jsb_filter_by_tags count="15" show_more="10" sort_by="total_products"/] A selection of recent paperbacks.