Boris Johnson’s memoir, Unleashed, is set to be published on October 10th at the Cheltenham Literature Festival – right in heat of Tory leadership battle.
The former prime minister has said his “thoughts on Britain’s future [will] explode over the publishing world like a much-shaken bottle of champagne” ahead of the release, with publisher Harper Collins adding that it will “shatter the mould of the modern prime ministerial memoir”.
The book’s release will come just over a week after the four leadership candidates shortlisted by the parliamentary party have made their pitch to the party’s autumn conference.
Conservative MPs are then due to select two from the four, with party members electing the winner by the end of October. Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel, Mel Stride and Tom Tugendhat are the six candidates.
Ahead of it hitting the shelves, a superb letter published in Private Eye has been doing the rounds again on social media.
In it, John Bothwell of Durham wrote:
Sir,
‘It’s unkind to use a classics degree as shorthand for the “bluster, lies and deceit” that characterise the current government, and I say that writing from my office in a university bioscience department.
‘The sciences can and will save your lives, especially in the face of climate change and current and future pandemics, but classics and the other humanities are going to be what makes those lives worth living afterwards.
‘The problem with Boris Johnson’s response to the pandemic isn’t that he studied classics: it’s that he’s a twat.
John Bothwell, Durham
Bravo, John, bravo.
Related: Boris Johnson dismantled with Eton College reworking of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’