In the winter edition of City Journal, our dubious doctor reviews Boris Johnson’s subpar memoir, which he purchased surreptitiously lest someone spot him with this unpopular book.

Boris writes breezily, and often with a near-adolescent facetiousness that either amuses or irritates. His intellectual seriousness, as against his evident intellectual capacity, has always divided observers—whether, deep in his soufflé of lightheartedness, there lies a suet pudding of gravitas trying to get out. Is his apparent frivolity a mask covering a deep, sincerely held, political philosophy?