Wes Streeting: One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up

Wes Streeting MP, Shadow Health Secretary, might have ended up in prison rather than in Parliament. His maternal grandfather, Bill, an unsuccessful armed robber, spent time behind bars, as did his grandmother, who was also a political campaigner.

Brought up on a Stepney council estate, the young Streeting saw his teenage parents struggle to provide for him. In One Boy, Two Bills & A Fry Up he brings to life the poverty, humiliation and incredible struggle of having to choose whether to feed the meter and heat the flat, or put food on the table.

He knows it was the help and inspiration he received from the great characters that surrounded him, especially his paternal grandfather (also called Bill), that ultimately set him on the way to Cambridge and then Parliament. He knew he could draw on the strengths developed in childhood to eventually come out, and to go on and face his treatment for kidney cancer.

Wes, will be in conversation with Helena Dollimore,  Labour's Parliamentary Candidate for Hastings and Rye  about this inspiring and witty East End growing up memoir.

‘For a politician to have such an extraordinary story to tell is rare. For that politician to be able to tell it with such eloquence and benevolence is rarer still. This book is a triumph.’

ALAN JOHNSON

This event will last approximately 1 hr 15 mins, will end with a Q and A and will be followed by a book signing.

More about Wes:

Wes Streeting was born in Stepney, London, on 21 January 1983. He is a Labour MP and Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.

He read History at Selwyn College, Cambridge and began his political vocation as President of the National Union of Students. Afterwards he became Head of Education at Stonewall and served in local government, before being elected as an MP in 2015.

His memoir One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up was published in June 2023. 

You can learn more about him on his Wikipedia page