London Mayor Boris Johnson to Shakespeare Biography

August 6, 2015 11:36 am·0 commentsViews: 11

Boris Johnson ‘signs £500k book deal’ to write Shakespeare biography

By Daisy Wyatt for The Independent, 26 July 2015

Johnson, whose best-selling biography of Churchill was lauded by critics last year, will write the book in time for a 2016 release to mark the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death.

The lucrative £500,000 book deal from publishing house Hodder is worth seven times his £74,000 MP’s salary, according to The Sunday Times.

Johnson’s decision to write the biography while serving as an MP and Mayor of London in addition to writing a column for The Telegraph has led to doubts about his commitment to his political work.

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Boris Johnson gets FOURTH job and £500k advance to write Shakespeare biography

By Jack Blanchard for The Mirror, 26 July 2015

Four-jobs Tory Boris Johnson has landed a £500,000 book deal to boost his huge taxpayer-funded income, it has been revealed.

The London Mayor will receive the half-million pound advance from publishing house Hodder for a biography of Shakespeare, due out next year.

His latest venture comes on top of his £121,000-a-year salary as the Mayor of London and the MP for Uxbridge.

And he trousers a further £275,000-a-year as star columnist for the Telegraph newspaper.

It means Mr Johnson will have even less time to devote to his Parliamentary duties over the next 12 months, despite heavy criticism from colleagues that he is lazy and disinterested at Cabinet meetings and spends little time in Westminster.

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Boris Johnson gets £500,000 deal to write Shakespeare biography

By Kat Brown for The Telegraph, 27 July 2015

Boris Johnson has signed a deal worth £500,000 with the publisher Hodder & Stoughton to write a biography of William Shakespeare to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the playwright’s death.

The author of several successful novels and non-fiction books, Johnson last year published his first biography, The Churchill Factor, about the former prime minister Winston Churchill.

It earned a four-star review from The Telegraph, and according to the trade magazine The Bookseller has so far sold 187,568 copies, earning the company some £2.6 million.

The Sunday Times reports that Johnson’s US publishers Hachette are keen for a follow-up to that book, but they will have to wait: Johnson’s Shakespeare biography is scheduled for publication in October 2016.

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