Please, Mister Postman
Play sample
  • Published: 15 July 2015
  • ISBN: 9780552170659
  • Imprint: Corgi
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

Please, Mister Postman

Formats & editions
EBook
18 Sep 2014
Audiobook
9 Oct 2014
Paperback
15 Jul 2015
Buy from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Your Bookstore Abbeys Boomerang Find local retailers Find local retailers Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Mighty Ape

Alan Johnson's moving sequel to the Sunday Times bestseller, This Boy

In July 1969, while the Rolling Stones played a free concert in Hyde Park, Alan Johnson and his young family left West London to start a new life. The Britwell Estate in Slough, apparently notorious among the locals, in fact came as a blessed relief after the tensions of Notting Hill, and the local community welcomed them with open arms.
Alan had become a postman the previous year, and in order to support his growing family took on every bit of overtime he could, often working twelve-hour shifts six days a week. It was hard work, but not without its compensations – the crafty fag snatched in a country lane, the farmer’s wife offering a hearty breakfast and even the mysterious lady on Glebe Road who appeared daily, topless, at her window as the postman passed by…
Please, Mister Postman paints a vivid picture of England in the 1970s, where no celebration was complete without a Party Seven of Watney’s Red Barrel, smoking was the norm rather than the exception, and Sunday lunchtime was about beer, bingo and cribbage. But as Alan’s life appears to be settling down and his career in the Union of Postal Workers begins to take off, his close-knit family is struck once again by tragedy…
Moving, hilarious and unforgettable, Please, Mister Postman is another astonishing book from the award-winning author of This Boy.
  • Published: 15 July 2015
  • ISBN: 9780552170659
  • Imprint: Corgi
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

About the author

Alan Johnson

Alan Johnson was born in May 1950. He is a British Labour Party politician who served as Home Secretary from June 2009 to May 2010. Before that he filled a wide variety of cabinet positions in both the Blair and Brown governments, including Health Secretary and Education Secretary. Until 20 January 2011 he was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. Johnson was the Member of Parliament for Hull West and Hessle until his retirement from politics in 2017.
His first book, This Boy, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Orwell Prize in 2013. His second, Please Mister Postman, won the National Book Award for Autobiography of the Year in 2014. His third, The Long and Winding Road, was published in 2016 and won the Parliamentary Book Award for Best Memoir.

Also by Alan Johnson

In My Life
The Long and Winding Road
This Boy
See all

Praise for Please, Mister Postman

The best political testament I have ever read

Peter Wilby, New Statesman

This boy can write…there’s nothing second-rate about his writing. He is a natural

The Spectator

A wonderful elegy for a life that has only just passed into history... Beautifully written, affecting and sad

John Rentoul, Independent on Sunday

A fascinating piece of social history

Daisy Goodwin, Sunday Times

Johnson’s writing style is easy, relaxed, self-deprecating. His recall and eye for detail are impressive

Chris Mullin, Observer

Full of delights

Francis Wheen, Mail on Sunday

Like Johnson's previous memoirs, this latest instalment carries a first-class stamp

Caroline Jowett, Daily Express

Immensely readable

Scotland on Sunday

Beautifullly written... and vividly observed

Daily Mail

A charming book

Guardian

'Witty, self-deprecating, sometimes uproariously funny and sometimes unbearably sad. It shines like a candle in the naughty world of inauthentic politicians and public alienation

David Marquand, New Statesman
penguin pop image
penguin pop image