Boris silent on claims his dad broke mother’s nose

BORIS Johnson last night refused to comment on the explosive allegation that his father struck his mother and broke her nose.

Charlotte Johnson needed hospital treatment after she was hit by her husband when the Prime Minister was ten, according to a new biography.

Mr Johnson’s spokesman refused to comment on the incendiary claim.

Author Tom Bower claims the astonishing secret, combined with the troubled relationship of Boris’s parents, defined him as a man. ‘Boris agonised over his mother’s fate,’ he writes in The Gambler.

‘Not only had he watched her suffer, but also saw his father blatantly deny the truth. Unwilling to confide in others about his father’s violence, he became a loner.

‘In his solitariness, his competitiveness was offset by self-doubt. To mask the misery and hurt, he demanded attention.

‘Boris’s bravado masked deep unhappiness. His parents’ marriage had become irredeemably fractured. Charlotte found the pressure of her husband’s neglect and philandering overwhelming.’

Doctors spoke to Stanley Johnson ‘about his abuse’ of his then wife, while the couple’s four children were told a car door had hit their mother’s face, it is claimed.

Friends said the incident took place in the 1970s when Mrs Johnson was suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder and had ‘flailed’ at Stanley, who broke her nose when ‘flailing back’. They added that Stanley, now 80, deeply regretted the incident and denied that he had been violent on any other occasion. He did not respond to requests for a comment yesterday.

Mr Bower describes Stanley’s marriage to Charlotte as violent and unhappy. In the book, she is quoted as saying: ‘He broke my nose. He made me feel like I deserved it’

Mrs Johnson’s parents visited their daughter in hospital and confronted Stanley who denied any involvement, the book claims.

The author says Mrs Johnson ‘confronted Stanley about the affairs she suspected him of having’, which he denied. In the book, which is being serialised in The Mail on

‘He made me feel like I deserved it’

Sunday, Mrs Johnson, now 78, says: ‘Stanley wanted to be loved and wanted sex and he wanted power. And when I contradicted him, it threatened his power.’

Based on interviews with hundreds of colleagues and family members, the book portrays Boris as a loner who struggled to cope with his parents’ divorce in 1978.

It also details Boris’s intense desire to become Prime Minister, jostling for advantage with fellow Old Etonian David Cameron and feuding with George Osborne.