By Boris Johnson
Hodder & Stoughton, £25
Certain characters in history are so sacrosanct that many believe touching them can bring you some of their golden halo. Henry V, pulveriser of the French, and Elizabeth I, invincible Armada sinker, spring to mind.
Could Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson become one of their number? He would like to think so; when still a toddler, he stated his ambition to be king of the world. Today, he rules City Hall. Tomorrow, the entire UK?
The wily mayor knows there are votes in linking himself, with this book, to our greatest ever statesman and national saviour, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill.
Boris sums him up, thus: "He was eccentric, over the top, camp, with his own special trademark clothes - and a thoroughgoing genius." Remind you of anybody? Once again, BJ would probably like to think so.
Johnson sources the politics of both Churchill and his father, Chancellor of the Exchequer Randolph, to "the greatest of all Tory magicians and opportunists, Benjamin Disraeli."
For this, Johnson relies on Randolph's revelation to Winston as described in The Dream, an essay by Winston in old age. "I always believed in Dizzy, that old Jew. He saw the future," Randolph confides to his son. And Winston saw himself and his father as Disraeli's heirs, "the bearers," Winston claimed, "of the mantle of Elijah."
"Disraeli and the Churchills," Johnson adds, "also have in common the journalism, the love of show, the rhetorical flourishes, the sense of history, and the inveterate opportunism." Remind you of anybody?
Churchill visited Munich in 1932 and sought a meeting with Hitler, through Nazi financier Putzi Hanfstaengl (who later fled to America). Hitler refused. Boris believes the reason was because Churchill had forcefully argued to Hanfstaengl that it was unfair to discriminate against Jews.
Johnson devotes several pages to Churchill's attitudes to Jews, and in particular Zionism, pointing out Churchill's admission that the Balfour Declaration was partly designed to deflect potential Jewish support for Germany. Johnson portrays him as objective in his dealings with the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine, his 1922 White Paper encouraging Jewish immigration. "He was not a Zionist," Johnson writes, but "he was 'wedded to Zionism.'"
The book is both paean of praise and irreverent romp, with analysis of Churchill's smorgasbord of achievements and accounts of Winston and Johnson howlers, Bertie Woosterisms everywhere, much sizzle and some sausage. It ties together both Boris's and Churchill's view on leadership.
Its stress on the importance of political bravery, and doing what is morally right, rather than what the polls and press dictate, is a timeless message. We forget, at our peril, Churchill's courage, from 1932, in opposing Hitler. At that time, many Tories saw the Bolsheviks as a greater threat, and some even saw Hitler as an ally. Similarly, today, when we obsess over Isis, isn't the greater danger in the black-turbaned and nearly nuclear-armed Grand Ayatollah in Tehran and his henchmen, and not just to Israel?
Prime Ministers, as Lord Chancellor Hailsham remarked, are elected dictators. When, like Churchill, they have wisdom, courage, popular appeal, and boundless energy, they can achieve great good. Today, with the world - including this country -- threatened by unparalleled dangers, how we could do with such a statesman.
