Stanley I Presume? - Hardcover

Johnson, Stanley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 000729672X ISBN 13: 9780007296729

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2009

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Product Description:

312 pages. Book and Jacket appear to have hardly been read and are both in As new condition throughout.

Review:

“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

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 000729672X
• ISBN 13: 9780007296729
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304