Stanley I Presume?
A rip-roaring and hilarious memoir from Stanley Johnson – father of London mayor Boris Johnson.
Stanley’s story begins with a loud bang – when his father, an RAF pilot in the Second World War, crash-lands a Wellington bomber on a Devon airfield. A few years later Stanley’s parents buy a sheep farm on nearby Exmoor, where Stanley does much of his growing up.
Stanley would keep his links with this much-loved rural idyll throughout his life – while going on to become an explorer, author, occasional politician and also one of the world’s first environmentalists. A sparkling raconteur and experienced thriller writer, in Stanley I Presume great stories are told in great style.
On leaving school in 1958 Stanley travelled alone through South America – hitching rides across the jungle on Brazilian Air Force planes – and shortly afterwards he rode a motorcycle 4,000 miles from London to Afghanistan, tracing the route of Marco Polo with two friends.
After winning Oxford University’s poetry prize with a love poem – written following a hilltop tryst in the West Country – Stanley went on to do various adventurous jobs, before working for the billionaire John D Rockefeller III, the World Bank, the United Nations and the European Union.
Stanley married and started a family young – Boris was born in New York when his father was 23 – and while Boris would go on to become big news, the family’s forbears also provide quite a story, as Stanley finds out.
For the Johnson family’s roots are not just in the West Country, but in Turkey too – where, as Stanley discovers, his politician grandfather Ali Kemal was torn to pieces by an angry mob. Stanley visits a Turkish village where the locals are blonde – later he learns that he and Boris are direct descendants of George II.
”'A hilarious memoir” - THE SUNDAY TIMES
”***** (FIVE STARS) 'Laugh out loud funny - once you've read it you'll understand a lot more about what makes Boris tick” - NEWS OF THE WORLD
”**** (FOUR STARS) 'This is a very funny book - Stanley devotes most of his autobiography to telling jokes at his own expense” - THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
”'A wonderful jaw-dropping account of a rollercoaster life. Johnson senior does not disappoint… the book is a triumph” - ANNE ROBINSON
”'Poet, explorer, irresistibly funny…. This lovely book reflects its author's delightful personality” - ESTHER RANTZEN
”'There’s no-one I’d rather go into the jungle with” - JOAN BAKEWELL
”'From the early days of running across a mat of spring flowers at the stadium at Olympia, to a standing ovation at the Berlin Film Festival, via the politics and people of his time, Stanley Johnson's life sparkles with a joy of living. He writes with the wit and humour of a true raconteur. Stanley, I Presume, is a fascinating read of a fascinating life” - ZOE WANAMAKER
'a rip-roaring read!' Boris Johnson, Telegraph, Books of the Year -