I read with a mixture of abject horror and wry amusement that Boris Johnson’s father, Stanley, is about to have an old novel of his re-published. According to The Guardian he originally wrote said novel in 1982. It was written about an imagined viral pandemic. It featured an epidemiologist as the hero and a green monkey, thought to be the animal vector for the virus. The novel was entitled “Marburg”, after the real-life Marburg virus that was the cause of a large outbreak of the disease in Marburg, Germany in 1967. Though the animal reservoir, like Covid 19, is bats, the virus was spread from laboratory workers who were handling African Green monkeys, who had caught the virus from bats!

Like Ebola, the virus is highly infectious and causes a hemorrhagic fever that is fatal in nearly 90% of those infected with the virus. The novel is now, mercifully, long out of print, having sold very few copies upon its original publication. In an example of spectacularly unabashed opportunistic self promotion, Johnson senior is now looking for a new publisher. With the current COVID 19 pandemic it must seem like the perfect opportunity to re issue this great literary work. Can there be, I wonder, a more self-absorbed family anywhere in the UK? Stanley has, of course, found fame on I’m a Celebrity, Get me out of Here; Rachel Johnson is a regular on Question Time and writes for Tatler, Vogue and others. With Boris, as PM, having just become a new father for the umpteenth time, and having been metaphorically resurrected on Easter Sunday from his COVID 19 near-death experience, the book is bound to be a best seller. His father has, perhaps, unwittingly written the zeitgeist novel!

Stanley Johnson’s literary agent, Jonathan Lloyd of Curtis Brown, describes the book, without a hint of ironic humour as “an unnerving, prophetic, intelligent thriller.” Reviews of the novel are few and rather mixed. A quick Google search reveals the following far from ringing endorsement: “Made it about a third of the way through, before I got too annoyed with its stupidity and quit” was one reviewer’s appraisal of Stanley’s literary talent. Let’s hope that Lockdown persists, and the bookshops remain closed, so that we are all spared the horror of Stanley Johnson’s book becoming a number one blockbuster this summer…