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This boy

Alan Johnson

2015328 pagesabout 5–8 hours
2015
first published
  • 2015Thorpe · 328 pages · ENGISBN 9781444823462

Alan Johnson's childhood was not only difficult, but unusual, particularly for a man who was destined to become Home Secretary. Not because of the poverty - many thousands lived 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 ... Played out against the backdrop of a vanishing community living in condemned housing, Alan's story moves from post-war austerity in pre-gentrified Notting Hill, through race riots and school on the King's Road in Chelsea, to the rock-and-roll years of making a record in Denmark, and becoming a husband and father whilst still a teenager.

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