Everything Critics Said About 'Twisted' Book Unleashed

Boris Johnson's former Cabinet colleague Amber Rudd accused him of lying and lying ahead of the publication of his memoir on Thursday.

Former Home Secretary Rudd, who once said that Johnson was “the life and soul of the party but not the man you want to take home at the end of the evening”, wrote in The Independent says his new book Unleashed shows his split personality and it looks like Billy Bunter has gone on a rampage at Westminster.

Johnson's memoirs were eagerly awaited: in January last year his register of interests revealed that he had received an advance of €510,000, well above the €7,674 received by his successor Liz Truss for his book 10 Years To Save The West.

And perhaps unsurprisingly, given that Johnson is one of the most polarizing figures in British politics, Unleashed has received both positive and negative reviews.

Read book reviews from our media partners below.

Boris Johnson bangs his own drum in his memoir, Unleashed, and it's fair enough

This is of course an opportunity for the former Prime Minister to get things off his chest, and where others pay for their therapy, the reader pays for Boriss.

He has a lot to say about the problems faced by the Conservatives in the last election (see Chapter 59). He is right to point out that he got ten points more votes in his last election than Keir Starmer did in July. Boris, a Get Brexit Done candidate, was one of the big winners of the populist vote in modern politics.

Where he is less good is in analyzing how he failed to deliver on his own very real promise.

Boris Johnsons Unleashed: a twisted, bitter memoir full of even more lies

Without the benefit of Boris Johnson's fine classical education, which is generously showcased, once again, in his unreliable memoir, Unleashed, I am unable to cite with any sense of confidence whatever the antonym of mea culpa in Latin.

So we'll have to stick to English instead and suggest that this book be better subtitled Not Me, Guv.

No opportunity to deflect blame is missed: no scapegoat is allowed to escape the bond; and no inconvenient truths intrude in what has been described, by his old comrade Nadine Dorries, as a tragic fall of Shakespearean proportions.

Boris Johnson writes better than any other politician, his memoir is proof

Unleashed is incomparably more readable than a standard political memoir. Still, I felt a little left out of Johnson's inner life.

He delights in nonsense: venturing out to sea in an inflatable kayak, planning to invade Holland, signing the Northern Ireland protocol, proposing a bridge across the Channel. Some recall Churchill, in whose mermaid costume Johnson sees himself. Best in this sense was his defense of Ukraine, which seemed principled.

A light Wodehousian character draws the reader into corners where embarrassing events lurk.

Boris Johnson's Unleashed criticizes the memoir of a clown

Written after their authors had lost power, most prime ministers' memoirs attempt, at some level, to be reflective. David Camerons begins by admitting that he still has daily anxieties about having called the Brexit referendum. John Majors begins even more disarmingly, asking why he got into politics.

But Boris Johnson doesn't think. He never has and he never will. And neither does his new memoir, with the disturbing title, Unleashed. It covers his tenure as Mayor of London, Brexit campaigner, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister. But if you're looking for confessions and examinations of the heart from the pen of Britain's most iconoclastic prime minister, you can stop now.

This is not the political memoir of the century as the Daily Mail has been touting for a week. Or, if so, 76 thankless years lie ahead for the publishing industry.