The Prime Minister is known to have missed five Cobra emergency committee meetings at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis.

Cabinet Office officials are said to be worried that Dominic Cummings is set to accuse Boris Johnson of missing those key meetings on the Covid crisis because he was working on a biography of William Shakespeare.

Amid criticism that it was too slow to act, the Government now faces claims that Britain was in a poor state of readiness, calls to order protective gear were ignored and its own scientists’ warnings fell on deaf ears.

It is feared that the failings may have cost thousands of lives.

By then, the virus was rapidly spreading inside Britain and the country was well on its way to becoming one of the worst-affected nations in the world.

There are plenty of people bashing Boris. Trouble is that he does seem somewhat incapable of not knowing how to hide his errant ways quite as well as his predecessors.

One would have thought that, given his only "real" job was as some kind of journalist, he'd be all too aware of the importance to keep his nose clean if he intended to embark on a career in politics.

In July 1999, Conrad Black offered Johnson the editorship of The Spectator on the condition he abandoned his parliamentary aspirations; Johnson agreed. While retaining The Spectator's traditional right-wing bent, Johnson welcomed contributions from leftist writers and cartoonists. Under Johnson's editorship, the magazine's circulation grew by 10% to 62,000 and it began to turn a profit.

His editorship also drew criticism:

• he avoided the inclusion of serious issues in the magazine
• he was regularly absent from the office, meetings, and events
• he made numerous incorrect political predictions in the magazine
• he published racist and antisemitic language in the magazine

In 2004, Johnson published an editorial in The Spectator after the murder of Ken Bigley suggesting that Liverpudlians were wallowing in their victim status and also "hooked on grief" over the Hillsborough disaster, which Johnson partly blamed on "drunken fans".

Hell hath no fury like an advisor scorned.

The prime minister's official spokesman on Monday said he was not aware of Mr Johnson having spent any time researching a book on Shakespeare since entering Number 10.

Asked if work on a Shakespeare biography was responsible for Mr Johnson missing COBRA meetings in January 2020, the spokesman said: "No, and I think there are a number of incidents I can run you through where COBRAs have been chaired by relevant secretaries of state."

Mr Johnson was first reported to have signed a £500,000 book deal to write a biography about Shakespeare in 2015.

At the time, the book was said to be due for publication to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death in 2016.

In April 2019, before Mr Johnson became prime minister, publisher Hodder & Stoughton said the still-to-be-completed book would be published in April 2020.

But, later in 2019 on the day Mr Johnson became prime minister, the publisher admitted it had no plans to publish "Shakespeare: The Riddle of Genius" for the "foreseeable future".

According to his register of financial interests as an MP, Mr Johnson regularly receives royalties from Hodder & Stoughton and other publishers for books he has previously written, which include a biography of Winston Churchill.

Number 10 denies Boris Johnson skipped coronavirus meetings to work on Shakespeare book

https://news.sky.com/story/much-ado-...-book-12315954



So, there it is then ..... Shakespeare DID NOT keep BJ from COBRA .....

(Mind you, that £500,000 would come be useful in keeping Carrie busy with her nest-building and her wedding plans ..... )

Synopsis

Shakespeare is the true British icon - he is still the most performed, the most translated, the most venerated playwright in history, and a man whose reputation, if anything, is in the ascendant. No one has resolved so many truths about the human heart, or so brilliantly debated our psychological and political predicaments. No author has ever produced such astonishing female characters, perfected comic language so dazzlingly, or taught us as much about politics as William Shakespeare.

Boris Johnson explains Shakespeare's genius in a simple and readable way; in a way that gets to grips with what is really going on, what the characters are up to, what the point of it all is; and in a way that sets the man simply and intelligibly in the context of his time. He explores not only the origin of Shakespeare's genius, but also the nature of his genius. If Shakespeare is the greatest ever, then of what exactly does his greatness consist?

'What makes Shakespeare Shakespeare? That, as the man once said, is the question.'

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN: 9781473625853
Number of pages: 432
Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm