• This Boy Alan Johnson
• This Boy Alan Johnson Amazon
• This Boy Alan Johnson Biography
• This Boy Alan Johnson Review

Avoids sentimentality by virtue of his matter-of-fact reportage of growing up in North Kensington, London. Think Angela's Ashes-lite though this is not to de. Not the poverty of Alan Johnson’s early life. That is merely surprising. Johnson and his older sister were brought up in conditions that were those of a foreign country to most people in the.

This is the first book in what looks like a series about the life of British politician Alan Johnson. The second book called Please, Mr Postman is reviewed in this post here. I picked this book up out of a whim when in a bookshop in London one day.

I found This Boy to be a pleasant read on the tube when commuting to and from work and during the time I was reading this book I was also living in central West London a suburb or two over from where this book was set. This personal and physical connection to the setting made reading this book even more special to me as I was new to London and learning about the history of the part of London I was learning to call home.

This book is well worth reading if you are interesting in UK politics, the history of the development of London, life in London in the past or Alan Johnson in general.

This Boy Alan Johnson

If you are interested in buying this novel you can do so via amazon using this link here. I have included the description of the novel from there should you want to know more about it.

Alan Johnson’s childhood was 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 the slums of post-war Britain, but in its transition from two-parent family to single mother and then to no parents at all.

This Boy Alan Johnson Amazon

This Boy Alan Johnson Biography

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. Played out against the background of a vanishing community living in condemned housing, the story moves from post-war austerity in pre-gentrified Notting Hill, through the race riots, school on the Kings Road, Chelsea in the Swinging 60s, to the rock-and-roll years, making a record in Denmark Street and becoming a husband and father whilst still in his teens.

This Boy Alan Johnson Review

This Boy is one man’s story, but it is also a story of England and the West London slums which are so 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.