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Boris Johnson’s highly anticipated memoir failed to make a splash in last year’s book-charts after he was outsold by former Tory MP rival Rory Stewart.
Despite a flurry of media attention in the lead-up to its release in October, Unleashed fell short of publisher expectations. Sales slumped, with end-of-year rankings highlighting its underperformance. The book only managed to reach number 45 on The Bookseller’s UK chart and failed to secure a place on The Sunday Times’ top 50 list.
In contrast, Mr Stewart’s political memoir, Politics on the Edge, resonated more strongly with readers. The Rest is Politics podcast host and outspoken critic of Mr Johnson saw his book climb to number 29 on The Sunday Times’ bestseller list and 28 on The Bookseller’s rankings.
Despite an apparent £2m advance on the 784-page account of his time in Downing Street, Mr Johnson only managed to sell 42,528 copies in its opening week and according to The Bookseller, only 138,000 overall.
This is far less than his publishers, HarperCollins, had likely predicted, given the huge advance and mass media attention to book received.
Other authors who beat the veteran Tory included two books from Richard Osman, the Guinness World Records 2025 and several cookbooks.
Weeks after its release, it was reported that the book’s lacklustre reception left shops with “piles and piles” of copies leftover.
Speaking on his podcast The Rest Is Entertainment, Richard Osman said at the time: “HarperCollins thought he was going to do Prince Harry numbers, and he [Harry] sold 450,000 in his first week, and he [Mr Johnson] sold 42,000, which is so far below any of the expectations they would have had. They have overpaid massively.”
Mr Johnson’s sales figures fall far short of predecessors Margaret Thatcher, who sold an estimated 120,000 copies upon the release of her 1993 memoir, and Tony Blair, who sold 92,000 copies in the first week of his.
In the book, Mr Johnson detailed a series of bizarre anecdotes, including the claim that he had been the one to try and persuade Prince Harry to remain a frontline royal, and his consideration of a military “raid” on the Netherlands to seize Covid vaccines.
Unleashed received a mixed critical reception, with pictures emerging on social media of copies placed in fiction sections of stores or next to books such as Surrounded by Liars and Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson.
The Independent gave the insipid tell-all just one star out of five, describing it as “shameless and predictable”.
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