Renowned British historian, journalist, and one-time speechwriter for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has passed away at the age of 94.
As a journalist, he tackled a range of issues, from pop culture to geopolitics, writing or editing over 50 books, among which we may highlight his histories of various countries and religions, and his biographies of figures from Jesus Christ to Winston Churchill.
Johnson was known as an intellectual representative of what can be described as the modern, Anglo-American Right, but he did not start out as such.
In the late 1970s, his political trajectory took him from membership in the Labour Party to fervent supporter of Margaret Thatcher.
Raised in a Catholic household, he was educated at a Jesuit school before enrolling in Oxford, where his thinking would be moulded by historian A. J. P. Taylor. This was followed by a likewise formative period in the British Army, during which he was stationed at Gibraltar.
The economic woes faced back home would, eventually, lead Johnson to leave the Labour Party, whose policies he identified as the culprit. In his 1977 Enemies of Society, the rising star took aim at these policies, also critiquing various radical intellectual figures of the 1960s.
Following this, he joined the conservative party, then under Thatcher, to whom he became an advisor and speechwriter. He would continue writing prolifically for decades, but his political ideas would remain more or less consistent. In 2006, his writing earned him the Medal of Freedom, presented to him by George W. Bush. This award highlights how representative a figure Johnson came to be for the Right.
Apart from his political legacy, Johnson leaves behind four children.
