What a hoot! I laughed from beginning to end. It obviously has a bias. How could it not as an autobiography? But none of that detracts from the sheer fun of the book and the insight into the mind and actions of a man who is, without doubt, a giant of his time. He rose and he fell and who knows if he will rise again? What comes across to me is the lack of any antipathy towards his erstwhile opponents and the hint that in many cases, behind the scenes, there may even have been a friendship. Comparisons are always drawn between Johnson and his obvious hero, Churchill. And some of them bear scrutiny. But the one thing that Johnson exhibits is that, behind the ego necessary for any frontline Politician, there is humility, self-deprecation and an empathy towards his fellow man, that his detractors, harping on about his privileged upbringing, might find unsettling.
THE UNMISSABLE, UNVARNISHED MEMOIRS OF BORIS JOHNSON
'ABSOLUTELY, TOTALLY, MIND-BLOWINGLY EXPLOSIVE' ED BALLS
'SENSATIONAL' DAILY MAIL
Boris Johnson has always been larger than life. Controversial, untrammelled by the normal rules of politics, his route to becoming Britain's prime minister included a landmark career as a journalist, two terms as London's mayor, leading the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and acting as foreign secretary. He won the largest Tory majority since 1987 when he went to the polls in December 2019 for a mandate to 'Get Brexit Done' - only to have his administration hit by the global Covid pandemic and toppled…
Inevitably, when you have read Boris Johnson's autobiography, you are led to investigate his hero. And the inevitable starting point is Johnson@ biography of the great man. We think that we know so much about the man and the myths. Seemingly much of what we think turns out to be right. But, and this is a big but, what Johnson does is to place the man, his opinions and the driving factors in his personality, firmly within the concepts of the age in which he lived. Many of his views, opinions and actions seem, to us in the modern world, to be racist, classist, paternalistic and downright wrong. But they weren't wrong in his time and there was nothing in those times that would ever have led him to question them. Johnson doesn't excuse him. But he does credit him with being the right man at the right time and he acknowledges that, without Churchill, things would have been significantly different and, probably, a lot bleaker.
From London’s inimitable mayor, Boris Johnson, the New York Times–bestselling story of how Churchill’s eccentric genius shaped not only his world but our own.
On the fiftieth anniversary of Churchill’s death, Boris Johnson celebrates the singular brilliance of one of the most important leaders of the twentieth century. Taking on the myths and misconceptions along with the outsized reality, he portrays—with characteristic wit and passion—a man of contagious bravery, breathtaking eloquence, matchless strategizing, and deep humanity.
Fearless on the battlefield, Churchill had to be ordered by the king to stay out of action on D-day; he pioneered aerial bombing and…
This is Book 4 of the Courtney Series but it is the one that stuck in my mind from 20 plus years ago and it was that memory that drove me back to the saga and to hugely enjoy it the second time around. The Courtney Series runs from the initial entry onto the southern tip of Africa by the Europeans, through the conquest of the continent and its eventual emancipation; the latter within my lifetime. This particular book encapsulates the beauty and the beast within this whole period. Fleeing from the aftermath of the Great War, pregnant with an illegitimate child, the heroine's first introduction to Africa is being shipwrecked on the Skeleton Coast; an endless expanse of burning sand dunes flanked, on one side by shark infested seas and, on the other, by a waterless desert. The descriptions are achingly beautiful and we are introduced to the San people, a race, largely now, exterminated by encroachment from both black and white incomers. The betrayal of the San, the heroine's saviours, and the desecration visited upon them and their land in pursuit of wealth that they could never share, is poignant. Nevertheless, this is a good yarn and thoroughly enjoyable from beginning to end.
'Centaine screamed and drove the point of her stave down into the jaws with all her strength. She felt the sharpened end bite into the soft pink mucous membrane in the back of its throat, saw the spurt of scarlet blood, and then the lion locked its jaws on the stave and with a toss of its flying mane ripped it out of her hands and sent it windmilling out and down to hit the earth below.'
The passionate love of a beautiful French aristocrat for a courageous South African aviator is begun and extinguished in the blazing skies of…
This book is set in the lead up to the Great War, its prosecution and its aftermath. It's main character is a young woman who becomes pregnant outside wedlock. He baby is fostered out and she throws herself into war work, including volunteering as a nurse on the front. There she encounters great dangers but, also, finds new love. Part Two , with the same title, continues her story and her son's exploits in the Second World War; firstly as an RAF pilot and then within, and fighting for the Resistance in France. All of the locations are extant. Most of the characters are based on the lives of David's family and his wife's family and their experiences within these two wars..
