In 2005, The Spectator's new chief executive, Andrew Neil, dismissed Johnson as editor. To make up for this financial loss, Johnson negotiated with The Daily Telegraph to raise his annual fee from £200,000 to £250,000, averaging at £5,000 per column, each of which took up around an hour-and-a-half of his time. He presented a popular history television show, The Dream of Rome, which was broadcast in January 2006; a book followed in February; and a sequel, After Rome, focused on early Islamic history. As a result of his various activities, in 2007 he earned £540,000, making him the UK's third-highest-earning MP that year.
Johnson was born on 19 June 1964 in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, to 23-year-old Stanley Johnson, an Englishman, then studying economics at Columbia University, and his 22-year-old wife of one year Charlotte Fawcett, an Oxford-born artist from a family of liberal intellectuals, and a daughter of Sir James Fawcett, a barrister. Boris's parents had married in 1963 before moving to the US, where they lived opposite the Chelsea Hotel. In September 1964, they returned to England, so that Charlotte could study at the University of Oxford; during this time, she lived with her son in Summertown, a suburb of Oxford, and in 1965 she gave birth to a daughter, Rachel. In July 1965, the family moved to Crouch End in north London, and in February 1966 they relocated to Washington, D.C., where Stanley had gained employment with the World Bank. A third child, Leo, was born in September 1967. Stanley then gained employment with a policy panel on population control, and in June moved the family to Norwalk, Connecticut.
More InfoJohnson was popular and well known at Oxford. Alongside Guppy, he co-edited the university's satirical magazine Tributary. In 1984, Johnson was elected secretary of the Oxford Union, and campaigned unsuccessfully for the career-enhancing and important position of Union President. In 1986, Johnson ran successfully for president, but his term was not particularly distinguished or memorable and questions were raised regarding his competence and seriousness. Finally, Johnson was awarded an upper second-class degree, and was deeply unhappy that he did not receive a first.
More InfoIn 1969, the family returned to England and settled into West Nethercote Farm, near Winsford in Somerset, Stanley's remote family home on Exmoor in the West Country. There, Johnson gained his first experiences of fox hunting. Stanley was regularly absent from Nethercote, leaving Johnson to be raised largely by his mother, assisted by au pairs. As a child, Johnson was quiet and studious and suffered from deafness, resulting in several operations to insert grommets into his ears. He and his siblings were encouraged to engage in highbrow activities from a young age, with high achievement being greatly valued; Johnson's earliest recorded ambition was to be "world king". Having few or no friends other than their siblings, the children became very close.
More InfoJohnson gained a King's Scholarship to study at Eton College, the elite independent boarding school near Windsor in Berkshire. Arriving in the autumn term of 1977, he began using as his given name Boris rather than Alex, and developed "the eccentric English persona" for which he became famous. He abandoned his mother's Catholicism and became an Anglican, joining the Church of England. School reports complained about his idleness, complacency, and lateness, but he was popular and well known at Eton. His friends were largely from the wealthy upper-middle and upper classes, his best friends then being Darius Guppy and Charles Spencer, both of whom later accompanied him to the University of Oxford and remained friends into adulthood. Johnson excelled in English and Classics, winning prizes in both, and became secretary of the school debating society, and editor of the school newspaper, The Eton College Chronicle. In late 1981, he was elected a member of Pop, the small, self-selecting elite and glamorous group of prefects. It was later in Johnson's career a point of rivalry with David Cameron, who had failed to enter Pop. On leaving Eton, Johnson went on a gap year to Australia, where he taught English and Latin at Timbertop, an Outward Bound-inspired campus of Geelong Grammar, an elite independent boarding school.
More InfoIn September 1987, Johnson and Mostyn-Owen were married in West Felton, Shropshire, accompanied by a duet for violin and viola Allegra e Boris specially commissioned for the wedding from Hans Werner Henze. After a honeymoon in Egypt, they settled in West Kensington, West London, when Johnson secured work for a management consultancy company, L.E.K. Consulting, but resigned after a week. Through family connections, in late 1987 he began work as a graduate trainee at The Times. Scandal erupted when Johnson wrote an article on the archaeological discovery of King Edward II's palace for the newspaper, having invented a quote for the article which he falsely attributed to the historian Colin Lucas, his godfather. After the editor Charles Wilson learned of the matter, Johnson was dismissed.
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