Author | Boris Johnson |
---|---|
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre | Political satire |
Set in | London |
Publisher | HarperCollins |
Publication date | September 2004 |
Media type | Print: Hardback octavo |
Pages | 326 |
ISBN | 9780007195909 |
OCLC | 056649301 |
823.92 |
Seventy-Two Virgins: A Comedy of Errors is a 2004 novel by politician, journalist and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson. [1]
At the time, Johnson was MP for Henley, shadow arts minister, and editor of The Spectator . Since then, he has been Mayor of London (2008–2016) and Foreign Secretary (2016–2018), and Prime Minister (2019–2022).
This book makes Johnson the third novelist to be Prime Minister; the first two were Benjamin Disraeli (17 novels) and Winston Churchill ( Savrola ).
"To a man like Roger Barlow, the whole world just seemed to be a complicated joke ... everything was always up for grabs, capable of dispute; and religion, laws, principle, custom – these were nothing but sticks from the wayside to support our faltering steps."
Seventy-Two Virgins: A Comedy of Errors
The President of the United States plans to visit the Palace of Westminster. A Lebanese-born terrorist aims to assassinate him; Roger Barlow, a hapless, bicycle-riding, tousled-haired MP aims to foil the attack in order to distract from a scandal involving his financial entanglement in a lingerie shop named Eulalie.
Seventy-Two Virgins received mixed reviews on original release. David Smith, writing for The Observer , said "despite the pacy narration, there is a sense of going nowhere fast", but praised the humour, saying "Yet while Johnson is a heroic failure as a novelist, he scores in his comic handling of those most sensitive issues: the ideological motives of Muslim suicide bombers (whence the title) and the mixed blessings of the American empire. The playing of these as pantomime risks causing offence, but, as in person, Johnson succeeds in being charming and sincere." [2]
The Spectator (which Johnson was editing at the time) gave it a positive review, Douglas Hurd comparing it to P. G. Wodehouse (the plot device of a character being threatened by potential scandal regarding his involvement in a lingerie business named 'Eulalie' is lifted directly from Wodehouse's The Code of the Woosters ) and praising the "rollicking pace and continuous outpouring of comic invention"; however, he also said that it read like it had been written in three days. (Hurd also accurately described Johnson as "the next prime minister but three".) [3]
In the Literary Review, Philip Oakes said that the "Thrills [were] muffled by relentless jokiness and inordinate length of book." [4]
Attention was refocused on Seventy-Two Virgins in 2019, with Johnson poised to win the Conservative Party leadership election and become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. [5] In The Guardian , Mark Lawson noted that "it's striking that Barlow's view – that public value should make private conduct irrelevant – is one the writer has continued to embrace through domestic troubles." He noted the anti-French and anti-American tone, and pointed out the use of offensive language: "references to 'Islamic headcases' and 'Islamic nutcases'. Arabs are casually noted to have 'hook noses' and 'slanty eyes'; a mixed-race Briton is called 'coffee-coloured'; and there are mentions of 'pikeys' and people who are 'half-caste'." [6] Sexist content was also noted. More sinister was that "the suggestion – from both an external observer, and the protagonist's inner voice – that Barlow [the author surrogate ] may be a fraud. His assistant worries that, under the jaunty vaudeville act, there are no real core ideals, values or beliefs." [6] The novel was also criticised for depicting Jews as "controlling the media" and being able to "fiddle" elections, an evidently antisemitic trope. [7] During the 2019 general election campaign, Catherine Bennett similarly argued that the novel "amounts to a compelling case for character reappraisal" and that its perceived tendency to evaluate women's worth "according to their fuckability on the – sometimes eccentric – Johnson scale" indicates a lack of "interest in addressing, for instance, sex discrimination, harassment, [or] the gender pay gap". [8]
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, was an English writer and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeves; the immaculate and loquacious Psmith; Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle set; the Oldest Member, with stories about golf; and Mr Mulliner, with tall tales on subjects ranging from bibulous bishops to megalomaniac movie moguls.
The Spectator is a weekly British newsmagazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world.
Douglas Richard Hurd, Baron Hurd of Westwell, is a British Conservative Party politician who served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major from 1979 to 1995.
Roderick Spode, 7th Earl of Sidcup, often known as Spode or Lord Sidcup, is a recurring fictional character in the Jeeves novels of English comic writer P. G. Wodehouse. In the first novel in which he appears, he is an "amateur dictator" and the leader of a fictional fascist group in London called the Saviours of Britain, also known as the Black Shorts. He leaves the group after he inherits his title.
Stanley Patrick Johnson is a British-French author and former politician who was Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Wight and Hampshire East from 1979 to 1984. A former employee of the World Bank and the European Commission, he has written books on environmental and population issues. His six children include Boris Johnson, who was prime minister of the United Kingdom from 2019 to 2022. He is a member of the Conservative Party.
Guto Harri is a Welsh broadcaster, writer and strategic communications consultant. He most recently served as Downing Street Director of Communications, having been appointed by Boris Johnson in February 2022.
Leave It to Psmith is a comic novel by English author P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 30 November 1923 by Herbert Jenkins, London, England, and in the United States on 14 March 1924 by George H. Doran, New York. It had previously been serialised, in the Saturday Evening Post in the US between 3 February and 24 March 1923, and in the Grand Magazine in the UK between April and December that year; the ending of this magazine version was rewritten for the book form.
Dominic Ralph Campden Lawson is a British journalist.
Uxbridge and South Ruislip is a constituency in Greater London that is currently unrepresented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament. The seat has been vacant since 12 June 2023, when the seat's previous holder, Boris Johnson (Conservative), formally resigned and subsequently produced a vacant seat. Johnson also served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2019 to 2022.
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is a British politician and journalist who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2019 to 2022. He previously served as Foreign Secretary from 2016 to 2018 and as Mayor of London from 2008 to 2016. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Uxbridge and South Ruislip from 2015 to 2023, having previously been MP for Henley from 2001 to 2008.
Joseph Edmund Johnson, Baron Johnson of Marylebone, is a British politician who was Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation from July to September 2019, and from 2015 to 2018. A member of the Conservative Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for Orpington from 2010 to 2019. He currently sits in the House of Lords. His older brother, Boris Johnson, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom between 2019 and 2022.
"Eulalie" is an 1845 poem by Edgar Allan Poe.
Charlotte Maria Offlow Johnson Wahl was a British artist. She was the mother of politician Boris Johnson, as well as the journalist Rachel Johnson and the politician Jo Johnson.
John Bew is Professor in History and Foreign Policy at King's College London and from 2013 to 2014 held the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the John W. Kluge Center.
The 2019 Conservative Party leadership election was triggered when Theresa May announced on 24 May 2019 that she would resign as leader of the Conservative Party on 7 June and as prime minister of the United Kingdom once a successor had been elected. Nominations opened on 10 June; 10 candidates were nominated. The first ballot of members of Parliament (MPs) took place on 13 June, with exhaustive ballots of MPs also taking place on 18, 19 and 20 June, reducing the candidates to two. The general membership of the party elected the leader by postal ballot; the result was announced on 23 July, with Boris Johnson being elected with almost twice as many votes as his opponent Jeremy Hunt.
Caroline Louise Beavan Johnson is a British media consultant and the wife of former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson. She is the daughter of Matthew Symonds, co-founder of The Independent.
The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History is a book by British politician, journalist and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, in which he details the life of former Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill. It was originally published on 23 October 2014 by Hodder & Stoughton.
Boris Johnson carried out the first significant reshuffle of his majority government on 13 February 2020. Following the December 2019 general election, there was considerable speculation that Johnson was planning a major reshuffle of the Cabinet, to take place after the United Kingdom's official withdrawal from the European Union on 31 January 2020. There were reports that up to a third of the Cabinet would be dismissed, Whitehall departments abolished and civil servants replaced by policy experts; however, the reshuffle was smaller than expected and no departments were abolished. The anticipated reshuffle was nicknamed "The St Valentine's Day Massacre" in the press, due to its proximity to St Valentine's Day, the name being a reference to the 1929 gangland shooting in Chicago.
The July–September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election was triggered by Boris Johnson's announcement on 7 July 2022 that he would resign as Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, after a series of political controversies.
The public image of Boris Johnson has attracted commentary throughout his political career. As Mayor of London, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and in various ministerial positions, British Conservative politician Boris Johnson has been considered a controversial or polarising figure in British politics.