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Charlotte Johnson Wahl

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Charlotte Johnson Wahl
Born
Charlotte Offlow Fawcett

May 1942 (age 82)
Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
Alma materLady Margaret Hall, Oxford
Spouses
  • ​
    ​
    (m. 1963; div. 1979)​
  • ​
    ​
    (m. 1988; d. 1996)​
Children
Parents
Relatives

Charlotte Maria Offlow Johnson Wahl (née Fawcett; born May 1942)[1] is a British artist.[2] She is the mother of Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and British journalist Rachel Johnson.

Early life and education

Born Charlotte Offlow Fawcett in Oxford, Charlotte Johnson Wahl is the daughter of Frances (née Lowe) and James Fawcett.[3] She was the granddaughter of Americans Elias Avery Lowe, a palaeographer of Russian Jewish descent,[4] and Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter, a translator. She read English at Oxford University, and was the first married female undergraduate at Lady Margaret Hall. She interrupted her studies to go to the US with her husband Stanley Johnson whom she met at Oxford and married in Marylebone, London in 1963. She later returned and was awarded a second-class honours degree.[5]

Paintings

Johnson Wahl is recorded as having "made her name as a professional portrait painter" for Crispin Tickell, Joanna Lumley, Jilly Cooper, Simon Jenkins, and others, but she also paints landscapes which have been described as echoing the Vorticist style.[6]

She continues to paint. Her paintings sell for £1,000 to £5,000.[7] Two of Wahl's paintings are in the collection of the Bethlem Museum of the Mind; another two are in the collections of Oxford University colleges.[8]

Personal life

Johnson Wahl is the mother of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the former MP Jo Johnson, the journalist Rachel Johnson, and the entrepreneur Leo Johnson. She and Stanley Johnson divorced in 1979. Johnson Wahl then married American professor Nicholas Wahl in 1988, but was widowed in 1996. She was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at the age of 40.[5]

In 2015, the Evening Standard referred to Johnson Wahl as "Left-wing", with her daughter Rachel stating that her father Stanley "tends to marry socialists." Rachel noted that her mother was "the only red in the village when we lived on Exmoor".[9]

During Boris Johnson's speech to the Conservative Party conference in October 2019, he disclosed that his mother voted for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum.[10]

References

  1. ^ "Charlotte Maria Offlow JOHNSON WAHL". Personal Appointments. Companies House.
  2. ^ "Charlotte Johnson-Wahl profile". The Times. 15 May 2008. p. 15.
  3. ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
  4. ^ Interview: Boris Johnson – my Jewish credentials Archived 19 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine, The Jewish Chronicle, Daniella Peled, April 2008
  5. ^ a b Killen, Mary (March 2015). "Boris Johnson's mother on her brilliant brood". Tatler. Retrieved 19 January 2018.
  6. ^ Jones, Jonathan (15 May 2008). "What would Boris's artist mum say about his train booze ban?". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 May 2008.
  7. ^ Llewellyn Smith, Julia (17 May 2008). "Boris Johnson, by his mother Charlotte Johnson Wahl". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 17 May 2008.
  8. ^ Charlotte Johnson Wahl paintings, BBC Your Paintings; accessed 1 May 2016.
  9. ^ "Sleeping with the enemy: meet London's politically cloven couples". Evening Standard. 27 April 2015. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
  10. ^ Devlin, Kate (3 October 2019). "My mother voted to leave the EU, says Boris Johnson". The Times. Retrieved 14 April 2020.
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