In 2003, Boris Johnson was a Tory M.P. and editor of *The Spectator.*

Boris-Ripper

Britain’s new prime minister wrote a comic novel with racy language and racial slights

By Ben Macintyre

In 2004, when he was MP for Henley and the prospect of becoming prime minister seemed the stuff of fiction, Boris Johnson wrote a comic political thriller called Seventy-Two Virgins: A Comedy of Errors. It received mixed reviews, sold a healthy 46,000 copies and then slipped into obscurity.

Fifteen years later, as Mr Johnson moves into Downing Street, it is time to re-examine this curious novel, for it contains clues to the prime minister’s views on a range of subjects: Islam, America, terrorism and women. There are many women. They are, invariably, buxom.