Origins and Early Life
Johnson was born in 1940 in Penzance, Cornwall, the son of Osman Wilfred Johnson and Irene, daughter of Stanley F. Williams of Bromley, Kent, and Marie Louise (née de Pfeffel). His paternal grandfather Ali Kemal Bey, one of the last interior ministers of the Ottoman Empire government, was assassinated during the Turkish War of Independence. Stanley's father was born Osman Wilfred Kemal in England in 1909, his Anglo-Swiss mother Winifred dying shortly after giving birth. After Ali Kemal returned to Turkey in 1912, Stanley's father and aunt were brought up by their English grandmother Margaret Brun (née Johnson) and took her maiden name, Stanley's father becoming simply Wilfred Johnson.
Johnson attended Sherborne School, Dorset, and while still an undergraduate reading Greats at Exeter College, Oxford, he took part in the Marco Polo Expedition with Tim Severin and Michael de Larrabeiti, travelling on a motorcycle from Oxford to Venice and on to India and Afghanistan.
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