Boris Johnson
Wednesday 5th November 2025
Controversial, untrammelled by the normal rules of politics, Boris Johnson's route to becoming Britain’s Prime Minister included a landmark career as a journalist, two terms as London’s Mayor, leading the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and acting as foreign secretary.
He won the largest Tory majority since 1987, when he went to the polls in December 2019, for a mandate to ‘Get Brexit Done’. Only to have his administration hit by the global Covid pandemic and to be toppled in a Tory party putsch.
SOLD OUT
Interviewer:
Jon Sopel
Jon Sopel is a renowned British journalist, bestselling author and podcaster.
He joined the BBC in 1983 and has since garnered national acclaim for his extensive reporting of UK politics (named political journalist of the year by the Public Affairs Industry in 2007). He has interviewed the most senior political figures in the UK and abroad.
Since 2022 he has been presenting the award winning daily podcast - The News Agents - alongside Emily Maitlis and Lewis Goodall.
Unleashed
Unleashed is Boris Johnson's account of his time in politics, and a book that shatters the mould of the modern prime ministerial memoir. Written in his inimitable style, it is honest, unrestrained and deeply revealing about the politician who has dominated our times.
This is his story of the fifteen years since he trounced Ken Livingstone at the polls to become Mayor of London. Riots, tackling knife crime, bikes, buses, the London Olympics, and so much more. He writes about his role in Brexit, takes readers through all the big decisions and his reasons for taking them, and describes how he nearly died from Covid.
Underlying everything in the book is his view that the UK is an extraordinary country and should have an exceptional future. These are the reflections of a political leader who believes fundamentally in levelling up – that there are millions of people in Britain who do not have the present they need or the future they deserve, and that it is the first job of politicians to put this right.
It is all here. From soup to nuts, warts and all. As a journalist he was famed as a blurter of unsayable truths, and he has drawn again on this quality for the book. About people, policies, mistakes and triumphs. This is it – the reality as he saw it: unvarnished, unlocked, unleashed.