TY - BOOK AU - Williams, Heathcote, TI - Boris Johnson : : the beast of Brexit : a study in depravity SN - 9781999636173 U1 - 920 PY - 2019/// CY - London PB - London Review of Books KW - Johnson, Boris KW - Great Britain KW - Politics and government KW - 2010- N2 - "It can be hard to keep up with Boris Johnson, as he hurtles like an out-of-control juggernaut from one high office to the next. No sooner has one scandal reared up in the headlines than it's crushed beneath his wheels, only for another to take its place, while the country is dragged along behind, and no deal Brexit looms ever closer. 'There will be drinking water,' Johnson has promised. Heathcote Williams composed his ‘study in depravity’ more than three years ago, before the 2016 EU referendum, but his portrait of the man who would be prime minister is as true a likeness of its subject now as it was then. Drawing on biographies by Sonia Purnell and Andrew Gimson, a great many newspaper articles, and Johnson’s own journalism and TV appearances, Williams assembles a blistering charge sheet: climate change denial, dishonesty, hypocrisy, incompetence, racism, violence, ‘remorseless self-promotion’, ‘a ruthless and often cruel ambition together with an elitism and a ferocious temper when challenged’." -- ER -