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.
In prose and in person, Johnson has always had an everyman likeability . . . his take on the good old days is sparely unsentimental . . . very readable. -- Stuart Maconie * NEW STATESMAN * This memoir will give you that warm glow of finding a friend who shares your passions . . . In this loving slice of social history, he beautifully mixes that passion with the story of a young man growing up and succeeding in post-war Britain. * DAILY EXPRESS * His charming memoir details the ways in which records by his heroes . . . have formed the soundtrack to his life. * MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Books of the Year' * Radiates the author's easygoing charm . . . at the peak of his youthful fame he auditioned for a band called the Jaywalkers . . . alas he was unsuccessful. Who knows what might have been? But what the pop world lost, the world of politics gained. -- Chris Mullin * SPECTATOR * What a lovely writer he is: funny. modest, unsentimental and utterly without self-pity . . . warmth, wit and honesty make this such a satisfying read. -- Marcus Berkmann * DAILY MAIL *