Stanley I Presume? Paperback / softback
by Stanley Johnson
Paperback / softback
- Information
Description
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 in 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. On leaving school in 1958, Stanley travelled alone through South America - hitching rides across the jungle on Brazilian Air Force planes - and shortly afterwards rode a motorcycle 4,000 miles from London to Afghanistan, tracing the route of Marco Polo with two friends.
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 twenty-three - 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 sparkling raconteur and experienced thriller writer, in 'Stanley, I Presume?', Stanley Johnson tells great stories in an unsurpassable style.
Information
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Out of StockMore expected soonContact us for further information
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:304 pages, 20 col plates (8pp)
- Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers
- Publication Date:04/02/2010
- Category:
- ISBN:9780007296736
Information
-
Out of StockMore expected soonContact us for further information
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:304 pages, 20 col plates (8pp)
- Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers
- Publication Date:04/02/2010
- Category:
- ISBN:9780007296736