I don’t know if he had a previous relationship with the subject (the acknowledgements suggests not), or fell under Johnson’s spell during the course of writing, but the outcome is a level of bias I would only expect from an autobiography.

His early life made Boris the man he is, a man who needs attention and constant confirmation that he is right. Contains a string of startling revelations about Mr Johnson's public and personal life, and goes farther than any previous biography towards solving the enigma of his true personality. 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.

Naturally, Stanley began sleeping with one of the two young women, in full knowledge of his children. an assertion that is hard to square with her 16 years of experience in the highest court in the land, which routinely hears cases around administrative and constitutional law. I felt that despite the warts and all approach, we are supposed to see Boris as a victim, misunderstood, even manipulated.

His self serving, self centred approach to do all to 'help Boris' succour his ambition has led to unimaginable consequences to the people of the UK and the UK itself. Officials, aides, junior ministers, Cabinet colleagues, the Foreign Office and the BBC have all let Johnson down — in Bower-view it is always their fault, never Johnson’s own. Equally the northern powerhouse and levelling up remain warm words but little has yet emerged as to how these will be delivered. 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. The onetime Telegraph diarist Quentin Letts is struck that Johnson never passed on any gossip: “He doesn’t notice people’s quirks and their embarrassments,” Letts observes, which Bower puts down to Johnson’s “narcissism”: he’s just not that interested in anyone other than himself.It’s a book clearly designed for the mass market, and no doubt will earn Mr Bower a lot of money, but more insightful, thought-provoking, and better-written biographies remain to be written by authors other than Tom Bower.

Bowers's biography of Simon Cowell, written with Cowell's co-operation, was published on 20 April, 2012. Belle évocation aussi du brillant journaliste, un classiciste et tribun redoutable quand il veut convaincre. A Sunday Times Book of the YearA Times Book of the YearA Guardian Book of the YearA Telegraph Book of the Year'EXPLOSIVE.Unfortunately, however, as it progresses it becomes more rushed and less well-structured, and the final few chapters almost completely ignore Brexit at the expense of a very generalist account of the battle against Covid. Photograph: Jessica Taylor/UK Parliament Handout/EPA View image in fullscreen Boris Johnson during a parliamentary session on Covid. His transformation from bumbling stooge on Have I Got New for You to a triumphant Mayor of London was overshadowed only by his colourful personal life, brimming with affairs, scandals and transgressions. There are inaccuracies in this account but much that is written elsewhere on Covid is subjective in any case.

It is also apparently Boris Johnson’s “stern” first wife Allegra’s fault for being too “demanding” — such as hoping for emotional support when her parents split up — when he needed all her attention himself without the onus of repayment. obviously more needs to be written on Boris’s leadership over Covid as this book only goes up to September 2020!Found it very weird that the book focus an extreme amount on Brexit, it sows the seed for that topic quite early on, however the book was released before Brexit was made final and the deal was reached. 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. To escape confiscatory taxation and punitive state control, the most talented of Britain’s wealth creators had fled abroad to earn their fortunes.