\'The best memoir by a politician you will ever read\' Philip Collins, The TimesSchool on the Kings Road, Chelsea in the Swinging 60s, the rock-and-roll years, the race riots;
this boy has seen it all.
________Alan Johnson\'s childhoodwas 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 Britain\'s post-war slums, but in its transition from being part of a two-parent family to having a single mother and then to no parents at all...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.This Boy is one man\'s story, but it is also the story of England and the West London slums which are hard to imagine in the capital today.