Alan Johnson | Author Website (original) (raw)
Death on the Thames
Available from all good bookshops
Death on the Thames
Available from all good bookshops
Alan Johnson served in the Blair and Brown government’s as Work and Pensions Secretary, Trade and Industry Secretary, Education Secretary, Health Secretary and Home Secretary.
Having left school aged 15 and failed in his attempts to become a rock star, he joined the Post Office as a postman and became a local official of the Union Of Post Office Workers rising through the ranks to eventually become the Union’s youngest ever General Secretary in 1992. Five years later he became the Member of Parliament for Hull West and Hessle, a position he held through five general elections standing down when the 2017 election was called.
Join Alan as you read through his memoirs to experience his life in the slums of North Kensington during the post-war 50’s through to reaching one of the highest offices of State.
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Recent Posts
Prospect Magazine
by | March 9, 2026 | Blog | 0 Comments
Alan was recently interviewed by Prospect Magazine, you can read the article here.
Harold Wilson, The Beatles and Me
by admin | February 19, 2026 | Blog | 0 Comments
The first of our 'Harold Wilson, the Beatles and Me' shows took place on February 11th at the East Riding Theatre in Beverley. This was a home fixture for me but not for the other half of the double act, the brilliant Andrew Wilson who travelled to Yorkshire from the...
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
by admin | January 16, 2026 | Blog | 0 Comments
In recent years I've chosen to read (or re-read) a classic detective novel to ease myself into each new year; 'The Long Goodbye' by Raymond Chandler and 'The Talented Mr Ripley' by Patricia Highsmith spring to mind, as do a couple of thrillers from the era of 'noir'...
Books of 2025
by admin | December 14, 2025 | Blog | 0 Comments
With two books published last year, this has been a year of promoting my last books (‘Death on the Thames’ and ‘Harold Wilson - 20th Century Man’), writing the next one, and reading. In a lifetime of reading, I’ve only now managed to read a Booker winner before it...
Borderlines Book Festival – Carlisle
by admin | November 17, 2025 | Blog | 0 Comments
Bookends, the fabulous independent bookshop in Carlisle and Keswick, is now responsible for two successful book festivals - Words by the Water in Keswick and Borderlines in Carlisle where this photograph was taken on Sunday, November 16th. The happy sight of book...
Tring – November 14th and 15th
by admin | November 16, 2025 | Blog | 0 Comments
Tring in Hertfordshire is a town I know very well because my sister, Linda, lived there in the late 60s/ early 70s. I now know it for the book festival that Ben Moorhouse, owner of the town’s independent bookshop, organises every year. This year I participated in the...
‘Harold Wilson: Twentieth Century Man’ goes paperback.
by admin | November 10, 2025 | Blog | 0 Comments
On November 6th my concise biography of Harold Wilson went paperback. I love the photograph that the publisher, Swift Press, unearthed to adorn the cover. The ubiquitous pipe is prominently displayed in a pose that somehow captures Wilson's potent combination of...
Mold and Wrexham
by admin | November 8, 2025 | Blog | 0 Comments
Just as Phil Collins famously did Band Aid concerts from Wembley and Philadelphia on the same day, so I managed two book festival appearances on the afternoon and evening of November 7th. The 2pm matinee was at Mold Library where my namesake, Caroline Johnson...
Blog from Cheltenham
by admin | October 21, 2025 | Blog | 0 Comments
The Cheltenham Literary Festival is the Glastonbury of the book world and this year I got to mix music and literature when I interviewed Ian Leslie on his fab best-seller about the greatest song writing partnership in history. The Beatles played the Odeon in...
Berwick Book Festival – Saturday afternoon
by admin | October 11, 2025 | Blog | 0 Comments
Durham in the morning - Berwick in the afternoon. Nobody could accuse me of a weekend productivity lapse. Carolyn drove me between the two towns across some of the finest landscapes in Britain. Gerry Folley conduced another brilliant interview. Here we are outside the...