17 May 2013
The greatest Londoner and the Scot who immortalised him met 250 years ago this week. James Boswell went from Ayrshire to London in search of Dr Samuel Johnson — and actresses. He found both, and his success was marked by the Boswell Trust with a breakfast yesterday at publishers John Murray, at which the actor John Sessions, himself from Ayrshire, read accounts of the encounter.
London’s best-known modern Johnson, Boris, was not at the breakfast but his biographer, Andrew Gimson, was. Gimson says Boris, though not from Ayrshire, has more in common with Boswell than with Dr Johnson.
