Alan Johnson never forgot being allowed to read a copy of David Copperfield when he was a boy. Kept under lock and key, books were too precious to be handled, much less read.

It was his favourite story and it’s almost his own, but not quite. David’s mother dies and there is no one to care for the child. Alan’s mother died but Alan had the redoubtable Linda. David ran away from London but Alan thought Battersea was abroad, something else he told the audience at the Connaught Studio Theatre on Wednesday night.

In an evening to promote his childhood memoir This Boy, Alan Johnson spoke movingly about growing up post-war on the “mean streets” of north Kensington in a derelict tenement condemned in the 1930s and only left standing because the Blitz had flattened everything else.

A rise from abject poverty to government high office has left his humour and his charm absolutely intact – how inspiring to observe that hard work and accomplishment need not destroy character or ideals.

Music’s loss was the country’s gain and we have to be grateful that Alan’s guitars, painfully bought on hire purchase or gifted from a stolen hoard, were nicked.