Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson
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15
Books
4
Awards
Boris Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson became the first US-born UK Prime Minister on 24 July 2019. He led the 2016 Brexit Leave campaign and won an 80-seat majority in the December 2019 general election. He frequently hosts Have I Got News for You and is often seen riding his bicycle.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Boris Johnson — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Boris Johnson by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Boris Johnson — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Johnson attended Eton College and read Classics at Balliol College, Oxford, where he became President of the Oxford Union. He was born on 19 June 1964 in New York City to Charlotte Johnson Wahl and Stanley Johnson, a prominent environmentalist and former MEP. Raised in London, his ancestry includes Turkish, Russian Jewish, and German noble lines, which shaped his upbringing.
Johnson first gained public recognition as a television personality on the satirical panel show Have I Got News for You, which he hosted multiple times. He served as Member of Parliament for Henley from 2001 to 2008, then became Mayor of London in 2008, winning re-election in 2012. In 2016, he led the successful campaign for Britain to leave the European Union. After serving as Foreign Secretary, he succeeded Theresa May as Prime Minister in July 2019, securing the largest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher in the December 2019 general election.
Johnson has been married three times: to Allegra Mostyn-Owen from 1987 to 1993, Marina Wheeler from 1993 to 2020, and Carrie Johnson since May 2021. He has eight children, including Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson, born in 2020 while Johnson was Prime Minister. His children also include Milo Arthur Johnson, Cassia Peaches Johnson, Theodore Apollo Johnson, Lara Lettice Johnson, Stephanie Macintyre Johnson, Romy Iris Charlotte Johnson, and Frank Alfred Odysseus Johnson.
Johnson’s premiership was defined by Brexit and the UK’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He came close to dying from COVID-19 in April 2020 but recovered. His government delivered the Brexit deal and the vaccine rollout. He received the Irving Kristol Award in 2015 and the Order of Liberty from Ukraine in 2022. Despite controversies, his 2019 election victory remains the largest Conservative win in decades.
Browse the complete filmography of Boris Johnson — every film, TV show, and documentary credit, ranked by popularity.
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Every award, honor, and recognition received by Boris Johnson — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
Boris Johnson's bibliography — every authored, edited, and co-written book, ranked by edition count.
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A wall of memorable lines from Boris Johnson — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
I’m a Jiffy Disposal Unit When It Comes to Leftovers. Apple Cores: Count Me In. Fish Heads: I’m Your Man, Especially the Eyes, Yum Yum.
My Speaking Style Was Criticised by No Less an Authority Than Arnold Schwarzenegger. It Was a Low Moment, My Friends, to Have My Rhetorical Skills Denounced by a Monosyllabic Austrian Cyborg.
My Policy on Cake Is Pro Having It and Pro Eating It.
To Rinse the Gutters of Public Life, You Need a Gutter Press.
In 1904, 20% of Journeys Were Made by Bicycle in London. I Want to See a Figure Like That Again. If You Can’t Turn the Clock Back to 1904, What’s the Point of Being a Conservative?
My Friends: as I Have Discovered Myself, There Are No Disasters, There Are Only Opportunities. and Indeed, Opportunities for Fresh Disasters.
I Think I Was Once Given Cocaine, but I Sneezed so It Didn’t Go Up. in Fact, It May Have Been Icing Sugar.
Or Whatever.
The Dreadful Truth Is That When People Come to See Their MP They Have Run Out of Better Ideas.
One Thing You Have Got to Do Politically Is to Identify the Ties That Bind Society Together and Try to Strengthen Them.
I Have Not Been More Robust Towards Female Rather Than Male Assembly Members and I Do Not Believe I Have Been Remotely Sexist.
Voting Tory Will Cause Your Wife to Have Bigger Breasts and Increase Your Chances of Owning a BMW M3.
I Lead a Life of Blameless Domesticity and Always Have Done.
I Can Hardly Condemn UKIP as a Bunch of Boss Eyed, Foam Flecked Euro Hysterics, When I Have Been Sometimes Not Far Short of Boss Eyed, Foam Flecked Hysteria Myself.
Chinese Cultural Influence Is Virtually Nil, and Unlikely to Increase…
I Don’t See Why People Are so Snooty About Channel 5. It Has Some Respectable Documentaries About the Second World War. It Also Devotes Considerable Airtime to Investigations into Lap Dancing, and Other Related and Vital Subjects.
If We Judged Everybody by the Stupid, Unguarded Things They Blurt Out to Their Nearest and Dearest, Then We Wouldn’t Ever Get Anywhere.
We Cannot Turn Our Backs on Europe. We Are Part of Europe.
It Is Easy to Make Promises It Is Hard Work to Keep Them.
Some People Play the Piano, Some Do Sudoku, Some Watch Television, Some People Go Out to Dinner Parties. I Write Books.
No One Obeys the Speed Limit Except a Motorised Rickshaw.
I’d Like Thousands of Schools as Good as the One I Went To, Eton.
What I Really Think About Banksy Is I Think He’s a Genius; He’s a Great Artist, and I Like His Stuff. but He’s Got to Accept It If, from Time to Time, Someone Will Need to Paint Over His Work.
I Love Tennis with a Passion. I Challenged Boris Becker to a Match Once and He Said He Was up for It but He Never Called Back. I Bet I Could Make Him Run Around.
If You Turn a Blind Eye to Fare Evasion, If You Accustom People to Getting Away with Minor Crime, You Are Making It More Likely That They Will Go on to Commit More Serious Crimes. That Is Why We Have so Much Disorder in London. It Is a Disgrace.
I Have More in Common with a Three Toed Sloth or a One Eyed Pterodactyl or a Kalamata Olive Than I Have with Winston Churchill.
I Take on an Almost Unbelievable Amount of Exercise, but I Have a Bad Habit of Eating the Children’s Supper for Breakfast.
We Should Be Helping All Those Who Can to Join the Ranks of the Super Rich, and We Should Stop Any Bashing or Moaning or Preaching or Bitching and Simply Give Thanks for the Prodigious Sums of Money That They Are Contributing to the Tax Revenues of This Country, and That Enable Us to Look After Our Sick and Our Elderly and to Build Roads, Railways and Schools.
There Is Absolutely No One, Apart from Yourself, Who Can Prevent You, in the Middle of the Night, from Sneaking Down to Tidy up the Edges of That Hunk of Cheese at the Back of the Fridge.
I’m Backing David Cameron’s Campaign Out of Pure, Cynical Self Interest.
The Job of Mayor of London Is Unbelievably Taxing, Particularly in the Run up to the Olympics.
Little-known facts about Boris Johnson — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
Columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown described Johnson as an ugly man inside and out.
His ancestral home of Kalfat, Turkey, birthplace of his patrilineal great-grandfather Ali Kemal Bey, pledged to honor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson by sacrificing sheep if he visits the village.
His heritage includes one eighth Turkish Muslim, one eighth Russian Jewish, and other European ancestries; he was raised in London.
Johnson is the third divorced man to become a British Prime Minister, after the Duke of Grafton and Anthony Eden.
In December 2019, he won an 80-seat majority in the general election, the biggest for a Conservative prime minister since Margaret Thatcher in 1987, and his 13,966,565 vote tally is the highest for any UK prime minister in the 21st century.
Despite being characterized as a buffoon, over half of Conservative MPs voted for him to be their leader and prime minister in 2019.
He became the 20th Old Etonian to serve as UK Prime Minister.
He led the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union in the 23 June 2016 referendum.
He studied at Eton College and read Classics at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was President of the Oxford Union.
In March 2004, he was nominated for a Best Entertainment BAFTA for his performances hosting Have I Got News for You.
He is the son of Stanley Johnson, a prominent environmentalist and politician, and Charlotte Johnson Wahl, an artist.
He is the former son-in-law of Charles Wheeler.
He is the brother of Rachel Johnson, Jo Johnson, and Leo Johnson, and half-brother of Julia and Max Johnson.
In March 2016, a young girl in New York mistook him for Donald Trump.
Fellow Conservative MP Kenneth Clarke described him as a nicer Donald Trump.
He succeeded Philip Hammond as Britain’s Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs on 13 July 2016, and renounced the office on 9 July 2018.
He is often seen riding his bicycle.
He won £1,000 in a poetry contest by The Spectator for a poem deemed offensive to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
After the 2016 Brexit vote, he initially decided not to run for Conservative Party leader, clearing the way for Theresa May, but later became leader in 2019.
He was MP for Henley from 2001 to 2008 and MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip from 2015 onward.
Donald Trump said Johnson was a very talented guy who would make a great prime minister.
In 2018, he was criticized for comparing burka-wearing women to letterboxes and bank robbers, but was defended by Rowan Atkinson.
His nickname Bonking Boris arose from revelations of extramarital activities.
He is commonly referred to simply as Boris by both allies and opponents.
Through his German noble grandmother, he is a descendant of the Kings of Württemberg and a bastard daughter of a second son of the last sovereign dukes.
He was a citizen of both the UK and US until he relinquished his American citizenship in 2016.
He received the Medal of the Paralympic Order at some date.
Musician Howard Goodall said Johnson is the most divisive politician in Britain outside the Tory faithful.
Fellow Tory Chris Patten said Johnson proved it possible to build a political career out of telling lies.
His great-grandfather Ali Kemal Bey was a liberal Turkish politician; his great-grandfather Elias Avery Lowe was a paleographer; his great-great-great-aunt Charlotte Porter was a poet.
When elected Conservative leader in July 2019, he became the first front-runner to win the leadership in over 50 years.
He was the first British prime minister to move into Number 10 with his girlfriend.
He made many appearances on Have I Got News for You prior to becoming PM.
He is the first Prime Minister born outside the British Isles since Bonar Law born in Canada.
He came close to dying of Covid-19 in spring 2020 but recovered; his son Wilfred was born shortly afterward.
He is the only Prime Minister during the reign of Queen Elizabeth II to have been born overseas.
He is the first US-born Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
In July 2022, after fifty-nine government resignations in three days, he resigned as Prime Minister on 7 July.
Burger King drove a truck around Westminster with a sign reading Turns out there is such a thing as too many whoppers.
His last words in the House of Commons were a quote from Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
He served as Prime Minister from 24 July 2019 to 6 September 2022.
In May 2024, he was turned away from a polling station for forgetting ID.
He is eligible to become US President? But constitution requires 14 years residency; he left the US at age 5.
He became the 2nd Mayor of London on 4 May 2008, was re-elected in 2012, and stepped down on 9 May 2016.
In a July 2019 speech, he held up a packaged fish to criticize EU regulations, but the Isle of Man is not in the EU.
He was the first British Prime Minister to lose his first vote in the House of Commons since 1783.
During the 2019 campaign, he avoided interviews with serious journalists but hid in a freezer to avoid Piers Morgan, and dodged a climate debate, which David Attenborough called shameful.
Journalist Jonathan Freedland called his accession as PM a dark day for democracy.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Boris Johnson.
Celebrities similar to Boris Johnson — same craft, ranked by reach.
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