Please, Mr Postman

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Alan Johnson

David Roper

Book of the Week: Alan Johnson - Please, Mr Postman: Episode 4

Episode 4

Alan Johnson - Please, Mr Postman

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Alan Johnson - Please, Mr Postman, Episode 4

Alan Johnson juggles an idyllic rural post round with increasing union activism.

Postman Alan Johnson dreams of delivering mail to the Home Secretary’s country residence in Dorneywood, Read by the author.

In July 1969, while the Rolling Stones played a free concert in Hyde Park, future Cabinet Minister Alan Johnson and his young family left West London to start a new life. The Britwell Estate in Slough, notorious among the locals, came as a blessed relief after the tensions of London's troubled Notting Hill, and the local community welcomed them with open arms.
 
Alan Johnson 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 and bingo. But as Alan Johnson'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.
 
Epsiode 4:
Juggling a rural post-round – where he gets his first view of the Home Secretary's country retreat, Dorneywood – and with a growing role in the trade union, Alan finds himself at an inevitable crossroads between the family life he had worked so hard to build and the exciting demands of political office.


Read by Alan Johnson
Producer: David Roper
A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4

Book of the Week: Alan Johnson - Please, Mr Postman

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Factual: Life Stories

The former home secretary Alan Johnson's memoir, read by the author.

The former home secretary Alan Johnson's memoir begins in 1969 as a 17-year-old Alan dreams of pop stardom. Read by the author.

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