A rip-roaring and hilarious memoir from Stanley Johnson – father of London mayor Boris Johnson. Stanley's story begins with a loud bang – when his father, an RAF pilot in the Second World War, crash-lands a Wellington bomber in a Devon airfield. A few years later, Stanley's parents buy a sheep farm on nearby Exmoor, where Stanley does much of his growing up. Stanley would keep his links with this much-loved rural idyll throughout his life – while going on to become an explorer, author, occasional politician and also one of the world's first environmentalists. On leaving school in 1958, Stanley travelled alone through South America – hitching rides across the jungle on Brazilian Air Force planes – and shortly afterwards rode a motorcycle 4,000 miles from London to Afghanistan, tracing the route of Marco Polo with two friends. Stanley went on to do various adventurous jobs, before working for the billionaire John D Rockefeller III, the World Bank, the United Nations and the European