‘Let’s melt down the railings to make bicycles’

Mary Wakefield

22 April 2009

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Boris Johnson talks to Mary Wakefield about being Mayor, playing God and beating David Cameron (at ping-pong)

I met Boris Johnson in his office in City Hall overlooking the Thames and Tower Bridge. Our former editor seemed a more thoughtful and sensible character than the man who used to practise cycling with no hands down Doughty Street at lunchtime, but there were signs of the old Boris tucked around his mayoral office: ping pong bats (the Mayor likes to unwind by trying and failing to beat his personal assistant, Ann Sindall); a book of love poems by the late Woodrow Wyatt; a bust of Pericles in the corner, looking out over this 21st-century Athens.

Do you identify with Pericles?   

It would be absurd to say that I identify with Pericles. But I have had a spooky veneration for him, ever since I read the funeral oration at the age of about 12 — the bit where he bangs on about Athenian democracy, and equality under the law, and a society based on merit. I remember my skin crawling with excitement because it was so obvious to me, back then in the Cold War, that Athens was like America — open, generous, democratic — and Sparta was like the Soviet Union — nasty, closed, militaristic, totalitarian.

Even though I later learned that it was all really propaganda cooked up by Thucydides, that speech still seems to me so fresh and modern, and far better than any speech I ever heard in the Commons.

Thirty years later I was in the British Museum shop, and in an ecstasy of pretentiousness I bought the last plaster bust they made of Pericles. The hat he is wearing is from some American mayor.

What would Pericles do to make London the school of the world?  

But London already is the school of the world. We have more of the world’s top 100 higher education institutions than any other capital, a constellation of universities that draws more students from around the planet than any of our rivals. London is the Athens of the global economy. I am afraid poor old Pericles would be quite stunned by the number of Greeks who feel it necessary to complete their education in London.

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Thucydides

April 23rd, 2009 3:03pm Report this comment

Links to Pericles's speech:

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GREECE/PERICLES.HTM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pericles'_Funeral_Oration

robert

April 23rd, 2009 8:13pm Report this comment

Boris talks a great campaign, but when events intrude - as the 1-day snowstorm earlier this year - he caves in to the health and safety lobby at the first push. Pericles? Not exactly.

Forlornehope

April 28th, 2009 12:09pm Report this comment

Nice to get some optimism from a politician for a change.

GK

May 5th, 2009 3:27pm Report this comment

Athens was like America, open generous, democratic — and Sparta was like the Soviet Union — nasty, closed, militaristic, totalitarian.

That is one way to view it. The Athenians dominated the Delian league and massacred the Melians
that defied them during the Peloponnesian war and great Pericles order the amputation of the thumb of all men of Aegina for the same reason, then sold them for slaves and colonised these islands.