How Charlotte Wahl Johnson’s troubled life shaped her son Boris

Attractive, accomplished and admired as an artist, friend and mother, Charlotte Wahl’s promising life could have been wrecked, first by cruel sicknesses and then by an adulterous husband. Instead, she bravely defied adversity and found happiness in a second marriage, her four children’s success, her friendships and painting.

Her death at 79 will be particularly painful for Boris Johnson, the eldest of her remarkable children. Despite all the pressures, he regularly visited his mother at her comfortable flat in Notting Hill Gate, recognising how much he owed her.

In frail health from Parkinson’s and other complications, Charlotte agreed to meet me in September 2019 for the biography I was writing about Boris. I had met her several times over the previous 20 years.

After describing her own happy childhood and Boris’s youth, she unexpectedly launched into a vivid description of her terrible marriage to Stanley Johnson. Describing her suffering because of his long absences, adultery and violence – allegations Stanley has denied – she had clearly decided, before illness finally prevented her speaking at all, to tell the truth. I