In October 2016, Boris Johnson, the recently-appointed foreign secretary, left Whitehall behind to fly to Italy for a private weekend break. He was invited to the luxurious Umbrian villa of his wealthy friend, Evgeny Lebedev – the Russian owner of London’s Evening Standard newspaper. It was not the first time Boris had been to the secluded Palazzo Terranova in the hills near Perugia.
During his stint as London’s mayor, Boris had been to the 17th-century villa four times as Lebedev’s guest, using his friend’s private jet to fly there and back to London. His now estranged wife, Marina Wheeler, sometimes accompanied him.
Boris’s host, the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch and former KGB agent, is regarded as a ringmaster of lavish, “outrageous” gatherings which attract the elite of Britain’s stage, screen, and politics. Some of those who have experienced what one guest called Lebedev’s “full Italian experience” have told openDemocracy that “nothing is off the menu from the moment you are greeted to the moment you leave. A quiet English country house retreat it is not.”
