A strange story about Johnson and a biography of Shakespeare

It’s been about six years since Boris Johnson approved writing Shakespeare: The Riddle of Genius, at least £ 88,000 in advance, would get his publisher to start working on a book that would bring his “curiosity, intelligence and passion” to tell the life of Britain’s greatest author.

Johnson, its publisher he said, would determine “whether it is all that has come to be a bard.” Waiting for the world to hear the answer to that profound question, Downing Street has polls instead of addressing the country where the prime minister spent time writing his book.

Westminster is flooded with debate as Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former top 10 adviser turned critic, will make an appearance in parliament on Wednesday to claim the prime minister was working on his biography of Shakespeare instead of tackling the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. .

A spokesman for Johnson completely denied on Monday that the prime minister had focused on the book in January and February 2020 – that the crisis was approaching. “The prime minister has been at the forefront of the government’s response to the pandemic,” the number 10 said.

However, Downing Street did not deny that Johnson worked on Shakespeare’s biography 88,000 pounds advanced Hodder Publishing and Stoughton UK in May 2015, when he became Prime Minister in July 2019.

Johnson’s financial difficulties (divorce, child support and subsidized housing renovation on Downing Street) are well documented, although his allies said he did not submit any work to the publisher during his time at No. 10.

But the mystery has long surrounded Johnson’s disappearance that he publicly witnessed for 12 days in February 2020, during which time he returned to Chevening, home of government grace and support, with his wife Carrie Symonds.

In the first two months of 2020, Johnson did not attend five meetings of the government’s Cobra emergency committee to discuss coronavirus. Downing Street said it was run by top ministers and that organization was unusual.

There were also severe floods in Britain in February, but Johnson did not visit the affected areas. He finally chaired the Cobra meeting on Covid-19 on March 2, three weeks before the country was blocked.

Shakespeare’s biography was originally scheduled to be published in 2016, coinciding with the 400th anniversary of Barden’s death. Hodder, the publisher of Johnson’s biography of Winston Churchill, paid the initial down payment and had UK rights, while Riverhead planned to release the book in the US and McClelland & Stewart in Canada.

Typically, publishers make more payments to authors when they submit a manuscript and publish the book. Some media reports that the value of Johnson’s book deal was around £ 500,000, with publishers saying it was not his prominence or the record as a sold-out author.

When he signed the agreement, Johnson was mayor of London, and received re-election a few weeks earlier after being re-elected to parliament in the May 2015 general election. In addition to writing the book, Johnson also wrote a column for the Daily Telegraph, which was paid about £ 260,000 a year.

But these commitments soon became difficult to juggle. Johnson missed the first term for Shakespeare’s biography, which coincided with the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign. That same year he was forced to leave the project after Prime Minister Theresa May was appointed foreign secretary. Hodder said the book was delayed “for the foreseeable future.”

Once Johnson returned to the Conservative banks after leaving the post of foreign secretary in 2019, a new unfinished book date was set for April 2020. But that was also delayed after Johnson won the Tory leadership race in July 2019.

Hodder said Monday: “After the success of Boris Johnson Churchill factor, Published in 2014, was hired by Hodder & Stoughton to write a book about Shakespeare, originally intended to be associated with Shakespeare’s 2016 anniversary.

“When Boris Johnson became foreign secretary we agreed that we would delay publication until a more appropriate time, and we have no plans to release the book in the future.”

Johnson’s friends said they wouldn’t be surprised if he worked on the book at No. 10, partly because he needs money and also writes to relax.

In 2009 he defended writing his Daily Telegraph column as mayor of London, saying there was no reason not to throw an article as a way to relax on Sunday morning.

In 2019, during the Conservative leadership campaign, Johnson said he had already begun preparing and completing his biography of Shakespeare, although he did not “as quickly” as he had hoped.

“This unjustly abandoned author will not get the treatment he deserves as quickly as it could otherwise have been,” he added. “That will upset me. . . I love writing about him. “

Anthony Seldon, a chronicler of successive prime ministers, said it would be “wonderful” if Johnson had found time to write books in his time at number 10 because it would allow him to lift himself above the daily routine of office.

Additional report by Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe and Sebastian Payne in London