Staggering Hubris

Josh Berry

The memoir of Boris Johnson’s most classic spad

‘A pitch-perfect send-up’ Evening Standard

Unless you’re a woman on Tinder between the ages of 19 and 30 in the Clapham area, or a high-end cocaine dealer operating in South West London, you probably won’t have heard of Rafe Hubris, BA (Oxon).

Despite that, he’s a crucial figure in the life of our nation. As Boris Johnson’s most classic special adviser (spad) at Number 10, he helped the UK government skilfully and efficiently control the Covid crisis, containing it for good by the end of 2020.

In the first of what will doubtless be many memoirs as Rafe travels his own inevitable journey to the premiership, this fly-on-the-wall account documents his Year of Rona in its entirety (and iniquity).

Even non-Oxbridge readers (for whom the author has taken care to keep his language as accessible as possible) will come away from this volume struck by how lucky we are to have him. Floreat Etona!

*Note for non-Oxbridge readers: this means ‘May Eton flourish’ in Latin.**

**Latin is the language of Ancient Rome and its empire.

‘A neat and perfectly observed skewering of not just the current administration, but the culture of over-familiar, self-important special advisers too’ Daily Telegraph

‘With each passing revelation about the government’s behaviour, Hubris looks less Yes Minister and more Attenborough’ Sunday Times

‘Talented young comic Josh Berry’s shriekingly awful Tory special-adviser character Rafe Hubris has come into his own in the wake of Partygate’ The Times

‘It does feel as if Josh Berry, ahead of time, got to grips with what was going on in Downing Street before those of us whose job it was to know’ Niall Paterson, Sky News

‘Berry’s most ingenious and defining creation: it’s not hard to draw a ladder directly from the stuffy, bluffy studies of Oxbridge tutorials to the Fulham living rooms of spads like Rafe’ Gentleman’s Journal

Paperback: 368pp

Published: Lightning (November 2021)

ISBN: 9781785633072