Stanley Johnson: Books That Changed My Life
1st Jan 2015 Meet the Author
Stanley Johnson is a writer, former politician and passionate animal rights and environmental campaigner. He’s also the father of six children—including the current Mayor of London.
Kennedy’s Latin Primer
By Benjamin Hall Kennedy
(Longman, £14.50)
This was my introduction to the classics. At school, we studied all the nouns, adjectives, verbs, declensions and conjugations that made up Latin— I found it exciting to understand how a language was constructed; it set me on the road to being a classicist.
Tschiffely’s Ride
By Aimé Tschiffely
(The Long Riders' Guild Press, £19.99)
Imagine riding 10,000 miles from Buenos Aires in Argentina, through Central America to New York! Tschiffely embarked on his journey with two horses in 1925 and I thought it the most wonderfully adventurous thing. Even today there isn’t a road that takes you from South to North America. I was still at school when I read his story and had only ever been abroad once in my life but, a few years later during my gap year, I too went to South America. I’ve been travelling the world for work and enlightening experiences ever since.
The Gathering Storm
By Winston Churchill
(Penguin Classics, £17.60)
I started reading Churchill’s six volumes on the Second World War when I was about 12. There’s a line in The Gathering Storm that describes his feelings when he first became Prime Minister on May 10, 1940, which has stayed with me all my life: “I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and this trial.” I wrote to him when he took office for the second time and was thrilled to get a letter back.
Stanley Johnson’s second volume of his memoirs, Stanley, I Resume, is out now.
Read more articles by Caroline Hutton here