Boris Johnson’s mother dies aged 79

Boris Johnson is mourning the loss of his mother, Charlotte, after she died at the age of 79.

Charlotte Johnson Wahl, a professional painter, died “suddenly and peacefully” at a London hospital on Monday, the family said.

The Prime Minister has described her as the “supreme authority” in his family and has credited her with instilling in him the equal value of every human life.

Mrs Johnson-Wahl, meanwhile, described her eldest son as “soft-hearted” in 2015 and in 2008 said she felt “protective of him” as he tackled ever greater professional challenges.

Last year, Mr Johnson told the nation during a coronavirus press conference that he was hoping to see her on Mothering Sunday, before Downing Street was forced to clarify that he would be speaking to her via Skype.

In 2019, at Mr Johnson’s first Conservative Party Conference as Prime Minister, he told delegates that they were entitled to ask about his core principles and ideals, saying his mother had taught him to believe in “the equal importance, the equal dignity, the equal worth of every human being on the planet”. He also disclosed in the same speech that his mother had voted Leave in the EU Referendum.

The daughter of the barrister Sir James Fawcett, who was president of the European Commission for Human Rights in the 1970s, Charlotte Johnson Wahl studied English at Oxford University, but interrupted her education to travel to America with Stanley Johnson, whom she married in 1963, and returned to complete her degree as the first married female undergraduate at her college, Lady Margaret Hall.

‘Once I started painting I could not stop’

It was as a portrait painter that she made her name, with sitters including Jilly Cooper and Joanna Lumley, but she painted other subjects, including landscapes, throughout her life and in 2015 was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London.

She told The Telegraph in 2015 that: “My older sister was terribly clever, as was my younger brother. My parents didn’t know what to do with me so they gave me some paints and I turned out to be good at it. Once I started I couldn’t stop.”

Explaining how she went about her work, she said: “When I paint people I am trying to capture what is unique about them, what makes them and nobody else. Once you’ve found that you’re well on the way.”

She and Stanley had four children: Boris, journalist Rachel, former Cabinet minister Jo and environmentalist Leo, before they divorced in 1979. The Prime Minister’s son Wilfred was her 13th grandchild.

How Boris got his name

Describing how the Prime Minister got his name, she once recalled: "When I was three months pregnant, we travelled to Mexico City by Greyhound bus. It was very uncomfortable, I was desperately sick. We stayed with a man called Boris Litwin, who drew me aside and said: 'You can't travel back like this, here are two first-class air tickets'.

“I was so grateful, I said: 'Whatever the baby is, I shall call it Boris.'"

She changed her mind and called him Alexander Boris de Pfeffel, adding: "At Eton, his friends discovered his foreign name and everyone started calling him Boris – even the beaks [teachers]. But everyone who's known him since childhood calls him Alexander. If I were to call him Boris it would mean something was really serious."

Describing the challenge of bringing up four young children, she said: "They were quite a handful but I loved them tremendously. I taught them very odd things that I wanted to know, like how to draw a squirrel. It was such fun, so cosy."

Mental breakdown

During the marriage she had suffered a mental breakdown and was admitted to the Maudsley psychiatric hospital where she stayed for nine months, later describing how she “lost it completely”, but used her time there to paint 78 pictures which catalogued her state of mind.

After moving to a flat following her divorce, she refused to accept any money from Stanley and eked out a living by selling her paintings, later recalling that she was “very hard up”.

She said: “Once I sent the boys to the market to buy a turkey for Christmas and they came back with a capon because turkey was too expensive. So Christmas dinner was rather small that year. It was like something out of Dickens.”

Diagnosed with Parkinson’s at 40

She married the American professor Nicholas Wahl in 1988, moved to New York and began painting cityscapes - which were the subject of a sell-out exhibition in 2004 - but was widowed in 1996 and moved back to London. At the age of 40, she had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease but she never allowed it to stop her painting, steadying herself with a walking frame as she did so.

She told the Telegraph in a 2008 interview: "I try to paint every day if I possibly can, though I have to go to the hospital a lot. I still manage to paint, though my arm will suddenly do a movement which is completely unintentional and that almost brings me to tears."

She refused to feel sorry for herself, and the only time she is known to have asked her son to use his influence was when he was mayor of London, and asked him to make sure buses did not move until everyone was sitting down, because “if you’re disabled, often you fall”.