Boris Johnson’s memoir, Unleashed, sold 42,528 copies in its opening week after being published on 10 October, making it the bestselling book of last week.
This means Johnson has outsold David Cameron’s 2019 memoir, For the Record, which sold 20,792 copies in the week it was published, though Tony Blair’s memoir, A Journey, sold 92,060 copies in its opening week. Liz Truss shifted just 2,228 copies of her memoir, Ten Years to Save the West, in its first week on sale earlier this year.
Margaret Thatcher’s 1993 memoir, The Downing Street Years, is estimated to have sold 120,000 copies in its first week on sale, though the book was published before publishing sales data company Nielsen BookScan’s records began.
“We’re delighted to see Boris Johnson’s Unleashed as the nation’s overall No 1 this week,” said a spokesperson from Johnson’s publisher, HarperCollins. “Boris is a writer to the core and Unleashed is a compulsively readable and unputdownable account of these recent turbulent years.”
Unleashed covers Johnson’s time as mayor of London, foreign secretary and prime minister, taking in Covid, Brexit and the 2019 election, among other major political events. “Johnson’s book gives his version of the big episodes,” wrote Martin Kettle in a Guardian review. “But it dodges the larger issues they raise.”
“It is full of angry self-righteousness,” he added. “Though Johnson likes to parade the outward signs of his intellect, there is not a philosophical sentence in the entire book.”
The book came ahead of Tim Spector’s The Food for Life Cookbook, which sold 29,732 copies, and Ian Rankin’s Midnight and Blue, which sold 19,359. Richard Osman was fourth in the chart, having sold 17,522 copies of We Solve Murders, published last month.
Images have emerged online of copies of the memoir in shops being positioned next to or covered by titles such as The Idiot by Elif Batuman, Entitlement by Rumaan Alam, Surrounded by Liars and Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson, The Psychology of Stupidity by Jean-François Marmion, How They Broke Britain by James O’Brien, The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey and A Short History of the World in 50 Lies by Natasha Tidd.
Other social media photos show the book placed next to toilet paper and cat litter in supermarkets and put in the fiction section of WH Smiths.
A parody of the memoir, Unhinged by Ian Martin, which was also published on Thursday, is being displayed prominently. Billed as the “perfect parody Christmas gift book for that selfish egomaniac in your life”, the book teaches readers to “trivialise everything with buffoonery” and “rebuild reality using various self-centred techniques”, according to publisher Bloomsbury.
A YouGov poll published today found that many Britons do not believe claims made in Unleashed. Only a quarter of respondents thought Johnson’s claim that Buckingham Palace asked him to try and convince Prince Harry not to leave the UK with his family was probably or definitely true, with 46% thinking it probably or definitely false, and 29% unsure. Just 31% thought his claim that Brexit meant the UK was able to get Covid vaccines faster than EU countries was probably or definitely true.
Unleashed by Boris Johnson (HarperCollins Publishers, £30). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
