Boris Johnson’s ‘Unleashed’ targeted with awkward book placements in stores

Former prime minister Boris Johnson has got a book out, and in addition to not topping the Amazon bestseller chart (The Mirror reported on Saturday that he was ranking behind books about penguins and gut health), Unleashed has been pictured appearing in bookshops next to other books which send a pretty awkward message about the Tory’s memoir.

In the run-up to its release on Thursday, the book was teased as containing what Johnson “really thinks” about his former chancellor – now leader of the opposition – Rishi Sunak, why he believes French president Emmanuel Macron “weaponised” the small boats crisis, and a U-turn on his views on the origins of Covid.

Oh, and several reports note Johnson dedicates some of the more than 700-page book to talking about ex-PM Theresa May’s nostrils.

Weird.

A number of reviews from news outlets pan the book, with The Independent’s one-star review describing it as a “memoir that’s twisted, sour and full of yet more lies” and The Guardian trashing it as “self-serving”.

In the New Statesman, Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister of Scotland, wrote that it “contains surprising moments of candour” but that these are “swept away on a tide of shameless self-justification”.

And in a noticeable break away from other reviews, The Telegraph – which previously employed him as a columnist – gave it five stars and says the ex-mayor of London “writes better than any other politician”.

Well then.

And while many social media users aren’t all that keen about reading a book from a PM whose reputation is still marred by Partygate, they have enjoyed instances where the memoir has appeared on shelves which provide some amusing context:

One display, reportedly from the WH Smith bookshop at Milton Keynes Central train station, sees Unleashed appear alongside Unhinged, the parody book by The Thick of It and Veep writer Ian Martin which apparently teaches readers how to “trivialise everything with buffoonery”.

It’s also been pictured near James O’Brien’s book How They Broke Britain, Thomas Erikson’s Surrounded by Idiots and Surrounded by Liars, Natasha Tidd’s A Short History of the World in 50 Lies and comedian Miranda Hart’s memoir I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest with You.

And some have even gone as far as to move it into the ‘fiction’ section of bookshops, in a move which echoes Private Eye editor Ian Hislop’s criticism of the book on this week’s Have I Got News for You.

“This is fiction,” he joked, when he imagined what dedication Johnson would write while signing copies for supportive Conservatives.

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