Alan Johnson: The Beatles, Harold Wilson & Me

The Right Honourable Alan Johnson is one of the most respected politicians of recent times, holding several posts in the Blair and Brown governments including Health Secretary, Education Secretary and Home Secretary. But all the while he harboured a secret passion – to become a pop star!

In The Beatles, Harold Wilson & Me, Alan charts his remarkable story from growing up an orphan in a North Kensington slum to the corridors of power and the surprising ways the lives of The Beatles and his political hero Harold Wilson interwove with his.

Guaranteed to delight Baby Boomers and West London residents alike, this is a nostalgic but unsentimental look back at post-war Britain and how the great figures of the age influenced the country we live in today. Alan might never have quite made it onto Top of the Pops, but arguably his impact on public life is all the greater for it.

 As John Lennon once sang, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

‘It’s not often that one must reach for the phrase “heart-warming” about the life of a politician,

but Johnson is exceptional.’ 

Mail on Sunday

‘Wry, self-deprecating, sometimes uproariously funny and sometimes unbearably sad.’

The New Statesman