One of only a few books I've bought on a whim recently, and this was because I read an interview with Alan Johnson in a Sunday newspaper whereby he was giving the journalist a tour of his old neighbourhood of Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove. Being just a short bus ride from a part of London I used to live in and blog about I was instantly intrigued and I was right to buy and read this book... in so many ways.

Not only is it a tender, slightly under-cooked (a good thing!), warts-and-all tale of life as a child in poor, post-war London, it is simply a remarkable story of survival and strength, the type I am utterly unfamiliar with on a personal level.

In short it follows the first two decades of Johnson's life moving from one falling down home to another all the while getting up to mischief with other local lads and bearing witness to some of London's most tumultuous times. While Johnson gives full credit to his mother and older sister for battling with chronic illness and authority respectively, as well as many, many nights of cold and hunger, there is not one moment where the story dips into self-absorbed wallowing or even hints at an anger that I felt surface in me at how such a sorry, sad state of affairs came to be.

No, this is a story of a family who looked out for one another; a story of a boy who loved London despite it being a city that kept him cold in winter and hungry on many an occasion; this is a story of a young bravery you don't see every day and yet I don't doubt that it continues to exist everywhere, even today.