Michael Deacon writing in the Daily Telegraph reports on Boris Johnson’s overblown responses to parliamentary questions:
…Virtually his every answer was a speech, lasting two, three, four minutes…Whether the committee found Mr Johnson’s views enlightening, I couldn’t say. But as he powered remorselessly on, I found myself recalling the scene in Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall, in which beleaguered schoolmaster [Paul Pennyfeather] attempts to set his unruly class to work by offering “a prize of half a crown for the longest essay, irrespective of any possible merit”. In that class, one suspects, Mr Johnson would have made a mint.
