Alan Johnson picks his five favourite books of all time

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Reading lists

The Long and Winding Road

Winner of the Parliamentary Book Award, best memoir by a Parliamentarian, 2016 
 
From the condemned slums of Southam Street in West London to the corridors of power in Westminster, Alan Johnson’s multi-award-winning autobiography charts an extraordinary journey, almost unimaginable in today’s Britain. This third volume tells of Alan’s early political skirmishes as a trades union leader, where his negotiating skills and charismatic style soon came to the notice of Tony Blair and other senior members of the Labour Party. 
As a result, Alan was chosen to stand in the constituency of Hull West and Hessle, and entered Parliament as an MP after the landslide election victory for Labour in May 1997. But this is no self-aggrandizing memoir of Westminster politicking and skulduggery. Supporting the struggle of his constituents, the Hull trawlermen and their families, for justice comes more naturally to Alan than do the byzantine complexities of Parliamentary procedure. But of course he does succeed there, and rises through various ministerial positions to the office of Home Secretary in 2009. 
In The Long and Winding Road, Alan’s characteristic honesty and authenticity shine through every word. His book takes you into a world which is at once familiar and strange: this is politics as you’ve never seen it before…

The third volume of Alan Johnson's bestselling and award-winning memoirs takes us to the corridors of Westminster and  lifts the lid on the life of a hard-working constituency MP...

Johnson writes with his usual warmth, wit and modesty.

It's not often that one must reach for the phrase 'heart-warming' about the life of a politician, but Johnson is exceptional. It's rare to find such decency and likeability in public life.

Very nicely told... Johnson is sharp on period detail.

Alan Johnson was born in May 1950. He is a British Labour Party politician who served as Home Secretary from June 2009 to May 2010. Before that he filled a wide variety of cabinet positions in both the Blair and Brown governments, including Health Secretary and Education Secretary. Until 20 January 2011 he was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. Johnson was the Member of Parliament for Hull West and Hessle until his retirement from politics in 2017. 
 His first book, This Boy, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Orwell Prize in 2013. His second, Please Mister Postman, won the National Book Award for Autobiography of the Year in 2014. His third, The Long and Winding Road, was published in 2016 and won the Parliamentary Book Award for Best Memoir.

Please, Mister Postman

In July 1969, while the Rolling Stones played a free concert in Hyde Park, Alan Johnson and his young family left West London to start a new life. The Britwell Estate in Slough, apparently notorious among the locals, in fact came as a blessed relief after the tensions of Notting Hill, and the local community welcomed them with open arms. 
Alan had become a postman the previous year, and in order to support his growing family took on every bit of overtime he could, often working twelve-hour shifts six days a week. It was hard work, but not without its compensations – the crafty fag snatched in a country lane, the farmer’s wife offering a hearty breakfast and even the mysterious lady on Glebe Road who appeared daily, topless, at her window as the postman passed by… 
Please, Mister Postman paints a vivid picture of England in the 1970s, where no celebration was complete without a Party Seven of Watney’s Red Barrel, smoking was the norm rather than the exception, and Sunday lunchtime was about beer, bingo and cribbage. But as Alan’s life appears to be settling down and his career in the Union of Postal Workers begins to take off, his close-knit family is struck once again by tragedy… 
Moving, hilarious and unforgettable, Please, Mister Postman is another astonishing book from the award-winning author of This Boy.

Alan Johnson's moving sequel to the Sunday Times bestseller, This Boy

The best political testament I have ever read

This boy can write…there’s nothing second-rate about his writing.  He is a natural

A wonderful elegy for a life that has only just passed into history... Beautifully written, affecting and sad

Johnson’s writing style is easy, relaxed, self-deprecating. His recall and eye for detail are impressive

Like Johnson's previous memoirs, this latest instalment carries a first-class stamp

'Witty, self-deprecating, sometimes uproariously funny and sometimes unbearably sad. It shines like a candle in the naughty world of inauthentic politicians and public alienation

Beautifullly written... and vividly observed

This Boy

'The best memoir by a politician you will ever read' Philip Collins, The Times 
 
School on the Kings Road, Chelsea in the Swinging 60s, the rock-and-roll years, the race riots; this boy has seen it all. 
________ 
 
Alan Johnson's childhoodwas not so much difficult as unusual, particularly for a man who was destined to become Home Secretary. Not in respect of the poverty, which was shared with many of those living in Britain's post-war slums, but in its transition from being part of a two-parent family to having a single mother and then to no parents at all... 
 
This is essentially the story of two incredible women: Alan's mother, Lily, who battled against poor health, poverty, domestic violence and loneliness to try to ensure a better life for her children; and his sister, Linda, who had to assume an enormous amount of responsibility at a very young age and who fought to keep the family together and out of care when she herself was still only a child. 
 
This Boy is one man's story, but it is also the story of England and the West London slums which are hard to imagine in the capital today. No matter how harsh the details, Alan Johnson writes with a spirit of generous acceptance, of humour and openness which makes his book anything but a grim catalogue of miseries. 
________ 
PRAISE FOR THIS BOY: 
'Moving and unforgettable' Sunday Times 
'Poignant' Telegraph 
'Eloquent' Guardian 
'Wonderful' Spectator 
'Tribute to two strong women' Daily Mail

Winner of the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize 2014 
Winner of the Orwell Prize 2014

the best memoir by a politician you will ever read

a poignant memoir…Johnson writes wonderfully

beautifully, beautifully written... his style is utterly simple, with a wit so understated that every reader will believe that he or she alone got it

Neither mawkish nor sentimental, it is an evocative, filmic account on an early childhood... would make a fabulous drama that, for all its squalor, lifts the spirits

a testament to the power of family love and a tribute to two strong women

Wonderful and moving... unreadable with a dry eye

the biography of a politician like no other - beautifully observed, humorous, moving, uplifting; told with a dry self-deprecating wit and not a trace of self-pity

No ordinary politician's memoir ... wonderful.

Truly remarkable. A brilliant portrait of what it was like growing up poor in London in the 1950s.

I love this book. Here is a classic account of working class life... It deserves to the read and admired

Alan Johnson may be the best Labour prime minister Britain never had, but his exceptional memoir is mercifully free of politics… all this he recalls in quiet, unpretentious prose

Outstanding... Hailed by readers of all parties and none, it is a popular piece of literature rated by Hilary Mantel, with a rare ability to make old men cry

The most extraordinary insight into growing up in urban poverty in our time

He recalls his childhood in detail, plainly, movingly, sometimes amusingly, but without a trace of self-pity or bitterness…a handsome and eloquent tribute

Alan Johnson

A Music Memoir

From being transported by the sound of 'True Love' by Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly on the radio, as a small child living in condemned housing in ungentrified West London in the late 1950s, to going out to work as a postman humming 'Watching the Detectives' by Elvis Costello in 1977, Alan Johnson's life has always had a musical soundtrack. In fact music hasn't just accompanied his life, it's been an integral part of it. 
 
In the bestselling and award-winning tradition of This Boy, In My Life vividly transports us to a world that is no longer with us - a world of Dansettes and jukeboxes, of heartfelt love songs and heart-broken ballads, of smoky coffee shops and dingy dance halls. From Bob Dylan to David Bowie, from Lonnie Donnegan to Bruce Springsteen, all of Alan's favourites are here. As are, of course, his beloved Beatles, whom he has worshipped with undying admiration since 1963. 
 
But this isn't just a book about music. In My Life adds a fourth dimension to the story of Alan Johnson the man.

Alan Johnson

In My Life

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