ALAN JOHNSON will recall his boyhood days when he visits Keighley on August 8.

The former Home Secretary will read from his bestselling book This Boy, which is about his childhood.

Alan is coming to Keighley at the invitation of John Grogan, the Labour Party’s prospective Parliament candidate Keighley.

Alan was born in 1950 and educated at Sloane Grammar School in Chelsea.

He became a postman in London in 1968 and at the same time joined the Union of Communication Workers.

Over more than two decades. He roles through the union ranks until he became the youngest General Secretary in the union’s history in 1992.

Alan was elected a Labour MP in Hull in 1997, and went on to hold several Parliamentary posts, most notably as Secretary of State for both Health and Trade and Industry, as Home Secretary, and as Shadow Chancellor.

Alan wrote This Boy, recalling a poverty-stricken childhood shared by many people living in the slums of post-war Britain, and of losing both parents.

He wrote about his mother Lily, who battled against poor health, poverty, domestic violence and loneliness to try to ensure a better life for her children.

He also recalled his sister Linda, who had to assume an enormous amount of responsibility at a very young age and who fought to keep the family together and out of care when she herself was still only a child.

The book is described as the story of two incredible women played out against a backdrop of a vanishing community living in condemned housing It moves from post-war austerity in pre-gentrified Notting Hill, through the race riots, school on the Kings Road, Chelsea in the Swinging 60s, to the rock-and-roll years, becoming a husband and father whilst still in his teens.

This Boy is one man's story, but it is also a story of England and the West London slums which are so hard to imagine in the capital today. No matter how harsh the details, Alan Johnson writes with a spirit of generous acceptance, of humour and openness which makes his book anything but a grim catalogue of miseries.