Oh dear God. This four-part documentary, tracing the career arc of our blustering erstwhile prime minister (2019-22), has surely come too soon. Hasn’t it? Apart from anything else, can we be sure he will stay fallen? If ever a Lazarus were going to bounce ...
Anyway. Let us brace ourselves and start at the beginning of this sorry tale. His childhood – privileged but unhappy – is given its due without being asked to explain or excuse the man. The children grew up under the toxic influence of their womanising father, Stanley, whose abuse of Boris’s gentle, artistic mother is a matter of public record, and it sent her to the Maudsley hospital for several months after a breakdown. (Friends of Stanley said he was very sorry and it had happened only once.) The pair divorced and Boris was sent away to school.
