Alan Johnson: Harold Wilson

Friday 23 May, 7:30pm, QUAD, DE6 3AS

Kindly sponsored by Smith Partnership

This event will be filmed and made available as a digital recording after the Festival. Available for purchase here.

We are delighted to welcome Alan back to Derby for his fourth visit.  He has joined as both an author and an interviewer.

Harold Wilson was one of the most successful Prime Ministers of recent years.  Prime Minister from 1964-1970, and again from 1974-74, he won four elections and a referendum on UK membership of the European Community.  The achievements of the Wilson Era - from legalizing homosexuality to protecting ethnic minorities, from women’s rights to the Open university – radically improved ordinary people’s lives for the better.  

Former Labour cabinet Minister and bestselling author Alan Johnson presents a portrait of a truly 20th century man whose ‘White heat’ speech proclaimed a scientific and technological revolution – and who was as much a part of the 60s as the Beatles and the Profumo scandal. 

Alan Johnson was a Labour MP for 20 years. He served in five cabinet positions in the Governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown including Education Secretary, Health Secretary and Home Secretary.

He is the author of award-winning childhood memoir This Boy and the sequels Please Mr Postman and The Long and Winding Road. His highly acclaimed first novel, The Late Train to Gipsy Hill was published in 2021. 

‘Johnson writes wonderfully’  Daily Telegraph