This boy

the long version

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.