What’s the secret of successful parenting? Like most middle-class parents, I don’t just want my children to be happy. I want them to have proper careers as well. I’d like each of them to go to a Russell Group university — ideally Oxford or Cambridge — and then do a further degree. If they win a scholarship to do postgraduate work at Harvard or Yale, so much the better. And I want them to achieve all this without spending a penny on their education.
The only parenting guide I’ve ever read is Andrew Gimson’s biography of Boris Johnson. You won’t find it in the ‘Parenting’ section of Waterstone’s, but it’s a font of useful information nevertheless. After all, Boris’s father Stanley has sired six children, all of whom got into Oxford. Not only that, but all the Johnson children are astonishingly successful. What’s his secret?
Stanley emerges from the book as a British version of Joe Kennedy.
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