Boris Johnson finally moved into Downing Street this week.
The domestic arrangements of our peripatetic PM have been complicated to say the least — booted out of his marital home and spending his time between girlfriend Carrie Symonds’s flat and houses lent by friends.
But wanderlust has been a regular feature of his life — since the age of 15, he has moved 32 times.
Here, David Wilkes maps the many homes of Boris . . .
First home: New York
Boris was born in June 1964 in Manhattan, where his father, Stanley, studied economics at Columbia University.
The family home was a loft apartment opposite artist Andy Warhol’s haunt, the funky Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd St.
‘It contained a yellow, out-of-tune piano with the motto “Vive La Fun!” painted glaringly on its lid,’ recalled Stanley.
Boris Johnson’s first home was a New York apartment opposite the infamous Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd St, where he stayed while his father Stanley studied at Columbia university
Transatlantic crossings
In September 1964, the family rented a property in Oxford while Boris’s artist mum Charlotte resumed her English degree at the university.
In 1968, they went to live in Washington DC, where Stanley worked for the World Bank, moving again to New York. At one point, they lived on an island in Connecticut.
Babes in (St John’s) Wood
Now joined by siblings Rachel and Leo, Boris returned to London in 1969.
Initially, the family lodged with Charlotte’s parents, lawyer Sir James Fawcett and his wife, Frances, in Cavendish Avenue, one of the grandest addresses in St John’s Wood.
The family moved to a white stucco house in chi-chi Little Venice. Similar six-bed terrace houses overlooking the canal now cost £8 million.
The Johnson’s returned to London in 1969, first lodging at Boris’ grandparents’ home in Cavendish Avenue, one of the grandest addresses in St John’s Wood
The family moved to a white stucco house in chi-chi Little Venice. Similar six-bed terrace houses overlooking the canal now cost £8 million.
Somerset’s Indian summers
The scene of Boris’s ‘first known literary work’, according to his father Stanley was ‘Boo to grown-ups!’ written on a wall in the family farm around 1969.
Johnson’s paternal grandfather was a hill farmer on Exmoor and Boris spent much of his childhood on the farm.
‘It’s the one place I truly call home,’ he has said. ‘All other places have changed, but not this one.’ He currently part- owns a property in Somerset.
The scene of Boris’s ‘first known literary work’, according to his father Stanley was ‘Boo to grown-ups!’ written on a wall in the family farm around 1969
The Johnsons moved to a home in Princess Road, Primrose Hill, in 1970
In the pink
The Johnsons moved to a home in Princess Road, Primrose Hill, in 1970, and, two years later — after fourth child Jo was born — to a nearby house in Regent’s Park Road.
The next-door house was bought around four years ago for £13.5 million by the fashion designer Stefano Gabbana.
Hello Brussels!
The family moved in 1973 to the EU’s capital city, where Stanley worked for the European Commission.
It was here that Boris began to fashion his views about EU bureaucracy in relation to condom sizes, bendy bananas and prawn cocktail crisp regulations.
Notting Hill high jinks
Shortly after Boris was sent to Eton, his parents divorced. His mother moved to a top-floor maisonette in Elgin Crescent (right) and her children followed in 1979.
Boris’s sister Rachel has recalled how her brothers ‘played endless percussive games of cricket and darts in the upstairs passages’.
Johnson honed his debating skills during dinner parties with Establishment figures such as future Times editor Simon Jenkins.
Oxford spires and a spouse
Boris spent three years studying Classics at Balliol College, Oxford, where he met his first wife, Allegra Mostyn-Owen.
Balliol College, Oxford University
Boris was seconded for three months in 1987 to Wolverhampton’s Express & Star newspaper
Boris the lodger
Hired by The Times as a trainee reporter, Boris was seconded for three months in 1987 to Wolverhampton’s Express & Star newspaper.
He is reported to have lodged with a woman called Brenda on Dimmock Street in Parkfields near Bilston.
The experience led him to say that local Labour politicians’ indifference to the damp in people’s houses made him realise he was a Tory.
The Times’s then foreign editor, George Brock, recalls him as ‘an immediately striking figure with red braces and albino hair’.
Young marrieds
Having been sacked by The Times for fabricating quotes from his godfather, newlywed Boris and Allegra lived first in a flat in Sinclair Road on the borders of Holland Park and Shepherd’s Bush.
In 1989, they moved to Brussels as he took up a post as EU correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. They lived above a dentist’s in the Flemish suburb of Woluwe-Saint-Pierre.
Newlyweds Boris and Allegra lived first in a flat in Sinclair Road on the borders of Holland Park and Shepherd’s Bush
Off to Islington
After the quick collapse of his marriage, Boris married his second wife, barrister Marina Wheeler, in 1993.
They settled in the one-time Socialist Republic of Islington.
From 1996 to 1999, they lived in a four-bedroom terrace house in Calabria Road (right), valued at £387,000 when they moved there and today worth £1.9 million.
Johnson’s journalistic career was by then flourishing and he became The Spectator’s editor in 1999.
Tumult in ‘media gulch’
The Johnsons moved in 2000 to a five-bedroom semi in Furlong Road, also in Islington.
Nicknamed ‘Media Gulch’, its residents variously included TV boss Ian Katz, columnist Tony Parsons, FT writer Kate Kellaway and Left-wing polemicist David Goodhart.
While he was here, Boris’s affair with Petronella Wyatt was revealed. Wife Marina threw him out and changed the locks, but later took him back.
The Johnsons moved in 2000 to a five-bedroom semi in Furlong Road, also in Islington
Bucolic bliss
Boris and Marina bought a four-bedroom detached house near Thame, Oxfordshire, for £640,000 in 2003.
They still own it and it’s worth £1,276,000, according to property website Zoopla.
Boris and Marina bought a four-bedroom detached house near Thame, Oxfordshire, for £640,000 in 2003
Final marital home
In 2009, the family moved to their third Islington home — a Grade II-listed, five-storey Georgian townhouse overlooking Regent’s Canal. They bought it for £2.3million.
Following Boris and Marina’s split, it’s now for sale for £3.75 million and ‘under offer’, according to estate agents. With his divorce still pending, Boris is likely to get a £700,000 windfall from the sale.
A grace-and-favour flat
Following the EU referendum in 2016, Boris was made Foreign Secretary and moved into One Carlton Gardens.
After he quit over Brexit delays, he was reluctant to leave and was accused of staying an extra two weeks because he wanted to keep raking in money from renting out his Islington home. He denied the charge.
Boris was made Foreign Secretary and moved into the grace-and-favour apartment at One Carlton Gardens
Carrie and that noisy row
Home for a short period was in Carrie Symonds’s flat in Camberwell, South London, worth £675,000 until they moved out in June after police were called by a neighbour after a blazing row over a spillage of red wine on the sofa.
The couple recently bought a £1.3 million three-storey, four-bedroom Victorian townhouse elsewhere in Camberwell — believed to be with a joint mortgage.
Home for a short period was in Carrie Symonds’s flat in Camberwell, South London, before the couple recently bought a £1.3 million three-storey, four-bedroom Victorian townhouse elsewhere in Camberwell
. . . and the address he has always wanted
Number 10 is a Grade I-listed building with around 100 rooms that has been home to Prime ministers since 1735.
A Ministerial Code sets out that residence here is largely tax-free but Boris is expected to pay council tax while other costs such as lighting, heating and redecoration will be taxable
Number 10 is a Grade I-listed building with around 100 rooms that has been home to Prime ministers since 1735
