Kmflett's Blog

The mother of Boris Johnson’s first wife Allegra Mostyn-Owen on his character

Gaia Servadio (1938-2021) has died at 82. A Jewish Italian who worked in culture and the arts, she was also a socialite and in the later 1950s a member of the Italian Communist Party.

She was also the mother of Allegra Mostyn-Owen who became Boris Johnson’s first wife in 1987. By 1992 the marriage had broken down

Servadio took a very dim view of Johnson. Indeed the Times obituary (August 21^st) records that she persuaded the US novelist Philip Roth to offer Allegra a job in America to draw her away from Johnson. She refused to take it.

Before the marriage Johnson had been invited to join the family on a skiing  holiday in France. He turned up with a suitcase full of dirty sheets and no ski clothes and made disparaging remarks about the Italian politics of Servadio.

In more recent times the Times records that Servadio said ‘I didn’t like the fact that he was on the right..but above all I didn’t like his character. For him the truth doesn’t exist’

Even so both of Servadio’s husbands were like Johnson Old Etonians…