This Boy; a Memoir of Childhood, Alan Johnson, 2013
Alan Johnson, often acclaimed as ‘the best prime minister we never had’, rose through the ranks of the Communication Workers Union and the Labour party to become Home Secretary in 2009 and later Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer until 2011. This Boy, recounts his childhood growing up in west London in the 1950s in what can only be described as relentlessly, grinding poverty. Although not labelled so by Johnson.
This is not a mawkish, misery memoir. Johnson evokes a tangible sense of 1950s west London life as he recounts his childhood with humour and openness in plain, undemonstrative and unsentimental language, easily pulling the reader in and along with him. The formidable women in his life, his mother, (abandoned by his father for another woman and a new family), and his older sister have centre stage in their loving and courageous efforts to protect him and to give him the best possible chances they can. He records his passion for football, reading and music, his unhappiness at school, trouble with his friends, his mother’s illnesses and death and his sister’s tenacity in keeping him with her, and out of foster care – all told without a hint of self-pity or rancour.
Given Johnson’s prominence as a politician, some readers were surprised that he made no obvious attempt to connect these experiences to his subsequent life and career; it was, however, largely pronounced to be the best book we have shared in our group. Most found it a profoundly moving reading experience, redolent with memories from their own youth that generated intensely personal responses to a carefully crafted and high affecting memoir.