Bookshop date for former MP

Chris Mullin held the seat for Sunderland South from 1987 to 2010.

He has juggled many careers with enviable success.

Famously left-wing as the Labour MP for Sunderland South, he led a campaign that resulted in the release of the wrongly convicted Birmingham Six, and campaigned generally on behalf of victims of injustice at many levels.

As an author, he published a series of diaries – A View From the Foothills (2009) (recounting Mullin’s ministerial career from 1999–2005), Decline & Fall: Diaries 2005–2010 (2010) and A Walk-On Part: Diaries 1994–1999 (2011), which attained national recognition, as well as fiction such as A Very British Coup, which was later adapted for television by Alan Plater.

Before both, he was a journalist, who was drawn particularly to wartime Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam – where he would meet his future wife, Nguyen Ngoc Phach, former officer in the army of the southern regime and war correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.

Mullin was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Law by his alma mater, Hull University, as well as an honorary degree by Newcastle University.

His new book, Hinterland, is a memoir containing references to his whole life, but as a reviewer wrote: “An unusual and sometimes inspiring one, written by an unusually fearless politician.”

His talk at Barter Books, which starts at 7.30pm, is entitled Great Political Disasters I Have Known (and Some That I Didn’t).

There will be wine, nibbles and book signing afterwards.

Tickets are priced £5. Please book in advance from the shop or call 01665 604888.