Please, Mister Postman

by Alan Johnson

(Transworld Books, £16.99) 

THIS latest volume of memoirs from Alan Johnson continues in the highly readable style of his first offering This Boy. 

Anyone waiting with anticipation for this second book, covering the period from 1968 to 1987, will not be disappointed.

Johnson retains the light and highly entertaining format that keeps the reader captivated from beginning to end. 

The book begins as Johnson and his family move from west London to a council house in Slough. Johnson enjoys the life as a postman delivering to the likes of Dorneywood — residence of the Home Secretary — and with his growing family in the new community at Britwell Estate.

But tragedy is never far away. While life seems settled, there then comes the bombshell of his brother-in-law being revealed as an alcoholic who eventually takes his own life. 

Johnson tells the story with great warmth and sensitivity, conveying the hurt of the time which has clearly remained with him to this day. 

The book plots Johnson’s rise in the trade union movement. Initially, Johnson seems to go along with things at branch level but his interest grows, leading to his becoming branch chair. 

He attends TUC conference in 1976 and seems initially struck by the theatre of it all. He is though, marked out early by Tom Jackson — then general secretary of the Union of Communication Workers — as a potential future leader. 

There is a nice balance throughout the book between Johnson’s work and personal life, with the tragedies providing a helping of pathos.

The strengths of the man, as a fixer and quick learner, certainly comes across. It is quite possible to see how the Alan Johnson of the mid to late-1980s became the can-do man that first Tony Blair and then Gordon Brown promoted to the highest of ministerial offices. 

Testimony to just what a good read this book provides is that, as with This Boy, it leaves the reader again eagerly anticipating the next one.

Paul Donovan