Alan Bennett dedicates Kipling poem A Dead Statesman to Boris Johnson

The playwright’s annual diary excerpt criticises the prime minister and Donald Trump and recalls an encounter with Philip Roth

Alan Bennett’s yearly diary excerpt sees the playwright dedicating Rudyard Kipling’s poem A Dead Statesman, in which the narrator proclaims that “all my lies are proved untrue / And I must face the men I slew”, to Boris Johnson.

Bennett’s annual chronicling of his life, published on Wednesday by the London Review of Books, moves from his problems getting a haircut in February – his partner Rupert Thomas takes on the task in lockdown and “manages to make me look like a blond Hitler” – to politics.