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Books

Boy, can Alan Johnson write

A review of ‘Please, Mister Postman’, by Alan Johnson. This second instalment of the former minister’s autobiography takes us from the urban jungle of Notting Hill to the cusp of political power

27 September 2014

8:00 AM

27 September 2014

8:00 AM

Please, Mister Postman: A Memoir Alan Johnson

Bantam Press, pp.327, £16.99, ISBN: 9780593073414

Alan Johnson’s first volume of memoirs, This Boy, is still in the bestsellers’ list, but the Stakhanovite postman has made a second delivery, timed impeccably for the party conference season. It charts his escape from the urban jungle of Notting Hill to Britwell council estate in Slough, via a succession of GPO sorting offices and eventually to high office in the Union of Communications Workers.

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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £14.99, Tel: 08430 600033. Paul Routledge is a columnist for the Daily Mirror and a biographer of Gordon Brown and Arthur Scargill.

 

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