Or not.
But close, according to the Mayor’s father’s new book, Stanley I Presume. By all accounts, according to an article in the Telegraph this week, Johnson Sr (StaJo? DadJo?) was recruited for spy training during his days at Oxford in the sixties. While he was the given ‘most intensive training in clandestine techniques known to man’, he apparently left for a job at the World Bank through a real fear that his ‘incompetence might have cost people their lives’ — typically self-derogatory humour (I hope) from the Johnson family, there.
Suddenly, the picture we ran of Double-O Boris the other month doesn’t seem quite so far-fetched…
I can assure you that the book is a great read and fast page-turner. It goes back to Boris’s grandfather and greatgrandfather!
The book is a greally great read and fast page-turner going back to Boris’s grandfather and great-grandfather!
A good sedative if you need to sleep immediately.
Stanley Johnson strikes me as very frank and straightforward, not good qualities for a spy (unless you are on a suicide mission). Haven’t had time to read the book, but my friend swears it is extremely amusing and she is now a huge Stanley fan.
The book is great, and no sedative! Extremely entertaining. We would have liked more information about Boris as a toddler though. The pictures of the solemn chubby Boris with a fat tummy are sooooo sweet!
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Stanley Johnson was a noted spymaster for years. The bluff, hearty, jokey persona would make the perfect cover, didn’t you see SPY GAMES? Nobody goes around in evening dress, asking for a martini, you might as well put a sign on.
I agree. Nobody makes jokes like that for real. He was talking in code.
Naw. Nobody recruits spies at Oxford. Isn’t it that other one they all go to?
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