Stanley Johnson

In the summer of 1961, Stanley Johnson, accompanied by Tim Severin and Michael de Larrabeiti, set out from Oxford on two BSA 500cc Shooting Star motorcycles to follow Marco Polo’s route from Venice to Beijing. Although they came tantalizingly close to the Chinese frontier, they were forced to divert to India. With one motorcycle out of action, the three of them rode the remaining machine down the Grand Truck Road from Kabul to Calcutta. In 2023, Stanley set off again with his fourth son, Max, to finish the journey he had started sixty-two years earlier. With a brilliant camera-crew in tow, they followed Marco Polo's precise route across China, all the way to the Summer Palace of Kubla Khan in Xanadu and on to Beijing itself. This book tells the tale of an extraordinary dream come true.

" A rollicking work of fiction that sets conniving caricatures of real-life figures amid a diorama of recent world events.... Mr. Johnson... clearly knows all the drills. The author of 25 earlier works of fiction and nonfiction, he has a lifetime’s expertise that adds comic credibility to a caper combining the antic action of Mad magazine’s old 'Spy vs. Spy' cartoons with the gonzo humor of Carl Hiaasen." -- The Wall Street Journal Stanley Johnson's new satirical thriller KOMPROMAT purports to tell what really happened in the run-up to those two recent political earthquakes, the Brexit Referendum in the UK in June 2016 and the US Presidential Election in November of that year. What was the real reason, for example, Britain's Prime Minister, Jeremy Hartley, included a commitment to hold an In or Out Referendum on Europe in the Conservative 2015 Election Manifesto? What was the true story behind Ronald C. Craig's unexpected triumph in the US election? Stanley Johnson's sweeping satire follows the intertwined fortunes of the leader of Britain's Leave campaign, former Cabinet member Edward Barnard and brash showman Presidential candidate Ronald Craig. KOMPROMAT reveals how the devilishly cunning machinations of Russian President Igor Popov succeed in crucially influencing the electoral outcome on both sides of the Atlantic. Plot, counterplot and subplot are deftly woven into an "alternative" account of events which ends as Britain's new Prime Minister, Mrs Mabel Killick, seeks her own mandate to deal with Brexit-related turbulence. KOMPROMAT combines a rich vein of satirical humor with a spirit of adventure that leaves the reader wondering whether this "fake" narrative might not, just possibly, be true.