A friend who belongs to an old-fashioned London club tells me that all anecdotes related within its walls are met with one of only three accepted responses: Great Fun, Rather Fun and Shame. Stanley I Presume is rather fun. It would have been great fun if the author was less discreet and less loyal and less scrupulous, because his life story — the first 40 years of which makes up the present volume — has been crammed with incident.
Stanley Johnson has worked as a spy, a pioneering environmentalist and a Member of the European Parliament. As a youth he rode from London to Afghanistan on a motorcycle, hitch-hiked across South America and won a prestigious poetry prize. He has been married twice and fathered six children, the current Mayor of London (and erstwhile editor of this magazine) the eldest of their number.
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