The reports were correct, and he was fired from his parliamentary job as the Conservative Party arts spokesman. For a student of Shakespeare, which Mr. Johnson is (he is writing a biography) the situation was replete with ironies. It was a boring assignment, but Mr. Johnson found a way of livening it: He made things up. In fact, it was as a journalist who played around with the facts that Mr. Johnson first made his name. Mr. Johnson has always had a knack for recasting disaster as farce, and he devoted his weekly newspaper column to the virtues of being fired.

Source: New York Times July 01, 2016 01:28 UTC