Alas, poor Boris: first the Shakespeare biog, then Dom

Boris Johnson is being criticised over claims that he was distracted from his duties in the early weeks of the pandemic because he was rushing to complete his long overdue biography of Shakespeare.

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? Valiant Boris is at his laptop. The sun is in the east and his manuscript is already four years overdue. It’s time to get Shakespeare done.

Greetings, gentle reader. In fair Chequers, where we lay our scene, our prime minister, blond of hair and short of readies, is racing amid a pandemic to complete his long-promised Shakespeare biography, for which light scratching he has been advanced £88,000 of a reputed £500,000 deal.

Our hero curses, bashing furiously at a laptop as he works on both versions of his biography: the Shakespeare-was-a-genius argument and the Shakespeare-was-overrated version. The evidence is with the former but the latter makes for more interesting copy. And yet, remember the subliminal messaging. The story of a great Briton told by a great Briton: how’s that for brand association? And let’s not forget that our writer is no slouch at the old wordsmithery himself.

The blurb for the book asks “whether the Bard is indeed all he’s cracked up to be”. A very good question. Could Shakespeare have written Seventy-Two Virgins? Well maybe, but not with the same élan as Johnson. Shakespeare would never have thought of that letterbox gag and he would have bombed on Have I Got News for You.

But on balance the old Bardolino probably has to be all he was cracked up to be or the brand association might not work. And the brand work is faultless. The PM is creating a little library of books on great Britons. First The Churchill Factor and now Shakespeare: The Riddle of Genius. Winston may have written A History of the English-Speaking Peoples but Johnson will write the history of the greatest English speaker.

The only glitch being that now he has to write the damn thing. And the deadline is tight, but then it always is. And then they scheduled the Brexit referendum for the first copy date and a pandemic for the second deadline.

He’s trying to find a few days to knock out 130,000 words in time for the next deadline but there are all these Covid cabinet meetings. Mind you, old Shakespeare had to cope with a pandemic too — did some of his best work then, a point worth making in the book.

Still, yond Cummings has a lean and hungry look. Funny chap, Cummings, he keeps banging on about the Manhattan Project. Apparently, we need a Manhattan Project for testing, a Manhattan Project for science and a Manhattan Project to fix the Downing Street photocopier. Actually, we may need one to finish this book.

“Listen,” says Cummings, “this pandemic is really serious as I warned you it would be in my 2019 blog which I’m just re-editing to that effect now.” Fair Boris stirs; he senses this might be important, but, dammit, he’s got a marriage to arrange and someone is going to have to pay for the wallpaper in the flat. “Look, just lock things down for a few days while I finish the chapter on his love life. I’m seeing some interesting parallels.” “Who with?” asks Cummings. “Oh, no one in particular.”

And now we see him wrestling with the dilemma. Miss another deadline, maybe have to pay back the money and not burnish his reputation with a library of books on great Britons, all of whom turn out, under his skilful pen, to have a great deal in common with him? Or neglect the pandemic and risk mishandling the nation’s gravest postwar crisis? It is not an easy decision. Perhaps he can do neither.

And this Cummings chap worries him. Might he turn? How can he buy his loyalty? “Dom,” he says, “I’m just thinking about my next book. What about Britain’s greatest political strategist? Cummings: the one-man Manhattan Project.”

“I’ve already written it,” Cummings replies. “I’ll be publishing it in a thread of 450,000 tweets. Oh, and by the way, it turns out I really was all I was cracked up to be.”

Follow Robert on Twitter @robertshrimsley and email him at robert.shrimsley@ft.com

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