Description
Author: Craig Brown
Format: Trade Paperback C Format
Publication date: 23/03/2020
Imprint: FOURTH ESTATE
ISBN: 9780008340049
From the award-winning author of Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret comes a fascinating, hilarious, kaleidoscopic biography of the Fab Four.
On April 10th 2020, it will be exactly 50 years since Paul McCartney announced the break-up of the Beatles.& At that point, we will be at the same distance in time from 1970 as 1970 was from 1920, the year Al Jolson’s ‘Swanee’ was the bestselling record and Gustav Holst composed The Planets.
The Beatles continue to occupy a position unique in popular culture. They have entered people’s minds in a way that did not occur before, and has not occurred since. Their influence extended way beyond the realm of music to fashion, politics, class, religion and ethics. Countless books have doggedly catalogued the minutiae of The Beatles. If you want to know the make of George Harrison’s first car you will always be able to find the answer (a second hand, two-door, blue Ford Anglia 105E Deluxe, purchased from Brian Epstein’s friend Terry Doran, who worked at a dealership in Warrington). Before she met John Lennon, who was the only Beatle Yoko Ono could name, and why? Ringo. Because ‘ringo’ means ‘apple’ in Japanese.& All very interesting, but there is, as yet, no book about The Beatles that combines the intriguing minutiae of their day-to-day lives with broader questions about their effect – complicated and fascinating – on the world around them, their contemporaries, and generations to come.
Until now.
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Craig Brown’s& Beatlemania& is a unique, kaleidoscopic examination of The Beatles phenomenon – part biography, part anthropology, part memoir, by turns humorous and serious, elegiac and speculative.& It follows the unique \”exploded biography\” form of his internationally bestselling, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret.
Hedley’s Books –
When One Two Three Four by Craig Brown landed I thought, “do I need to read another book on The Beatles?” However, this is a clever take on the fab four and after hearing that it won the prestigious non-fiction book award The Baillie Gifford Prize it hit my Christmas reading pile. And what a fab book it is!
A mixture of history, diaries, interviews, fan mail, facts and trivia it brings alive not just John, Paul, Ringo and George but the cast of characters that were along for the ride. Highly recommended.
– David