A Life and a Half

The story of one man's unorthodox path to politics, from Labour Minister and Sunday Times-bestselling author Chris Bryant.

Before he was a politician, Chris Bryant was an Anglican priest, baptising babies and holding the hands of the dying. Before that, he manned the barricades in Latin America, and before that, he was the scared son of an alcoholic mother and an estranged father.

This is a no-holds-barred account of a Minister’s truly unconventional life before politics – one that has left Bryant equally at home behind the altar, in sweaty gay night clubs, on the hustings or the stage.

A Life and a Half tells a story of bishops and actors, drag queens and pushy candidates, stuffed with moments of joy and hilarity and sorrow and abuse. All while tracking the landscape of late-twentieth-century British politics, from Thatcher to the birth of New Labour. It is a politician’s memoir like no other.