 My name is Jamie Andrews. I'm Head of English and Drama here and it's my very, very great pleasure to be introducing tonight's event. At the British Library we were the home of writing and writers. We're great champions of writing and writers across centuries, across millennia even. In light of that I think it's really appropriate and we're really proud to be hosting tonight's event which celebrates John Lennon the writer and most particularly John Lennon the letter writer. We have known Hunter for quite a while and so when he mentioned this project of his John Lennon letters we immediately talked to him about how we might help celebrate the book and launch the book. It's been an absolute pleasure knowing Hunter for so long and when Hunter started talking about the project we realised something that we didn't understand before, just how widely John corresponded. Many of you in the audience will know that very well because he corresponded with some of you and I know that people in the audience have received letters from John, knew John and corresponded with him. I think that makes tonight a particularly special gathering and we're very aware of that and we're very grateful to you all for coming. Some of those letters that some of you received are part of the 300 or so letters that Hunter has collected for the first time and edited as part of his book. In just a minute Hunter is going to talk a little bit about that process of collecting, finding and editing the John Lennon letters which has been published by Orion on Tuesday. And knowing Hunter as I do I know that it's going to be a real treat. And knowing Hunter as I do I also just want to say a few words about Hunter and the British Library. Now I've had the pleasure of knowing Hunter for a few years now but Hunter first got to know the library back in 1985 when we were at Bloomsbury which was a little bit before my time, when Hunter approached the trustees of the British Library with a really quite remarkable proposition. Now those of you who know Hunter will know that he has established the largest single collection of Beatles lyrics. So that's handwritten lyrics of some of the most famous songs in the history of popular music. And Hunter had been collecting them through his time hanging out with the band in the studio on the road. And when he approached the library in 1985 he offered to place these lyrics on loan at the British Library. And I'm quite relieved to report that the trustees were overjoyed with the suggestion and very very happy to accept. And so we've had these lyrics at the library now for coming on 30 years. They've been on permanent display in our treasures gallery alongside other treasures such as other global treasures such as Shakespeare's first folio, copy of the Magna Carta. And they've been absolutely admired and enjoyed by everyone from royalty to school children who comes to visit. And personally I got to know Hunter just a few years ago when we started working together to try and see if we could make this loan something permanent, to be permanently part of the national collections here at the British Library. And in light of that we've been really excited to follow the progress of a new scheme that the government's introducing called the cultural gift scheme. And we're very excited about that being brought in very very soon so watch this space as far as that's concerned. And from that working with Hunter I do just want to say that he really is the most kind and generous man to work with. Really really is the case. Absolutely crucially he's so much fun to work with as well. And when you're dealing with government paperwork for insurance that really really counts. And I really wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't just take this opportunity on behalf of the library to say how grateful we are to Hunter for everything he's done with us and for everything he's doing with us. So with that said I'm going to hand over to Hunter. He's going to talk for about 40 minutes or so about the process of editing the book, about gathering the letters and then we're going to open up to questions for 20 minutes or so. And afterwards don't rush away because Hunter will be signing copies of the letter. But for now ladies and gentlemen please give a very warm welcome to Hunter Davis. Thank you Jamie. Jamie is the best dressed man in the whole of the British Library and the competition is intense. He could be a good PR couldn't he. He should be working around that working in the British Library. I feel a bit worried talking about the Beatles. Anyway thanks every week for coming here this evening. It's a massive turnout. I'm absolutely thrilled. If any of you have come down from Birmingham from the Conservative conference you don't have to clap because obviously you've been clapping all week. If you're on route to Wembley, I'm sure Alan's on route to Wembley, do you see the giants of San Marino? Well this would be a nice quiet evening for you before the excitement of tomorrow. Thinking about the Beatles is that I always make mistakes about them because there are so many world experts and Beatles brains. Quite a few of them are here this evening and I always forget things. I forget the sequence of events. I can't spell the names of the associated people. I get the records in the wrong order. But people think I should know it because I did this book 44 years ago. The thing about this book was that when I finished it since then I've done 40 other books. I haven't done a Beatles book since. So my mind is filled with all these other topics. When you've finished each book it's like an exam. You wipe it from your memory. So I bow to the knowledge of the real Beatles brains which I am not. So I apologise when I get things wrong. But I'm a Beatles enthusiast so all these 40 years I've been still loving the music, still playing the music. I think they're hugely significant as a cultural force. I'm a massive collector so I've got about 2,000 items of Beatles stuff. So I'm an enthusiast rather than an expert. So what I was going to do this evening is do three little things. One is tell you the background to how I came to do the biography in the first place. Then I'm going to talk about the letters which Jamie's just been talking about. And then I'm going to show the world premiere. That's a joke. I'm going to show a little film which you won't have seen before at the end. Just a five minute film. So first of all how I came to do the Beatles biography was I asked. In 1966 I was working on the Sunday Times. I was writing a column called the Atticus column which is still going today. In those days we did, I joined the paper in 1960 as the volume of the Atticus column. And we did bishops and we interviewed ambassadors and it was really boring stuff. And about the middle of the 60s, the 60s arrived about 1964 then suddenly everything changed. And I became the boss of the column and I stopped doing bishops and ambassadors. And I did footballers like George Best. I did cockney photographers like David Bailey. I did Gritty Northern Novelists. And I did the Beatles. And in 1966 I went to see Paul McCartney and St John's Wood in the house which he still has. Because I thought Eleanor Rigby had just come out. And I thought not just the tune but I thought the words were brilliant. I thought they were really good. And I went to see him, interviewed him, did the piece. And I said rather ass-licking in the piece that it was the best poetry that will be published this year. And Kenneth Tynan wrote to me and said yes I agree with it. It will be the best poetry published this year. Six months later I went to see Paul again in his lovely house. And by this time I'd written a novel called Here We Go Round the Modderbush which has been made into a film. And we hoped that Paul would do the theme tune for it because he did a few bits of music for other people in the 60s. So I went to see him with the director of the film. And I had a different hat on this time. I was a screenplay writer, a hack journalist. And during that meeting he turned the idea down. I said there should be a proper biography of the Beatles. A hardback book. There have been two little books already, both paperbacks, perfectly okay. But they didn't tell you much about, they hadn't interviewed them properly and they hadn't done the background. I said for the rest of your life when people ask you the same dope equations such as why do you spell the Beatles in that silly way which people were still asking in 1966. Why have you got your hair like that? You can say it's all in the book. And he said, excellent idea. But you'll have to get permission from Brian Epstein, their manager. And Paul there and then helped me write the letter because he's so charming and PR orientated. So I wrote a letter with Paul's help to Brian and Brian kept on cancelling and it went on cancelling. I thought oh god it's collapsed before it's going. Then eventually I got an appointment with him in Chapel Street in Belgravia. And I thought my agent was coming. At the time I had an agent called Richard Simon. And lo be hoe when we got to the house this tall distinguished man called Spenser, enemies here from publishing, Spenser Curtis Brown appeared. I thought he was dead. Curtis Brown was the biggest then, I think still today, agency in the world, well in Britain. And I didn't know that actually had been the Curtis Brown. But everyone was so desperate to get into Brian Epstein's house. He chucked my poor agent out and done all the work. And he ponsed him. I remember sitting waiting for Brian. Brian was only two years older than me, but looking back to 1966 he seemed so sophisticated and cultured and well dressed and a real emprisario. I was so impressed by him. I didn't know the truth that was going on in his life. While I was waiting for him in his room I saw two Lowry oil paintings. I'd never seen Lowry old paintings before. Henry Brian arrived and was charming. And we agreed the deal. And he suddenly said he offered another clause in the contract. Nobody had asked him for this. He said, I will write him that I will give no access to any other writer for two years after the book comes out. So this is 1966 when we're chatting. The book came out in 68 and in 1970 the Beatles were no more. So my book, by luck for me and chance, but really by default it became the only authorised Beatles biography because nobody was given access afterwards. But when I was doing the book I didn't know that. Brian, the reason for him cancelling was that he was a depressive and he was on pills and he was a homosexual. But he was a very complicated homosexual. He used to pick up sailors and boys and people who were butch who weren't gay. And he would bring them back to his house, give them drugs and drink and give them presents. And then he would try to get them into bed and they would beat him up. And that was his masochistic pleasure. So he was an absolute torment when he would wake up because there were still things. There were still acetates of beetle things and he would have hysterics. The beetle knew he was gay but it was never discussed and don't forget it was against the law in 1966. So Brian agreed my contract which is excellent. It was £3,000 advance shared with the Beatles and I went back to Heinemann the publisher and told them and several directors said, oh we know everything we want to know about the Beatles and anyway the bubble will burst very soon, this is 66. And I said, it's not really, it's more social history. And they said, oh who wants social history? I spent the first six months on the book not interviewing the Beatles. I thought they're the most famous boys on the planet. There have been so many questions. So I just got, I thought I'd only come back and talk to them properly when I had things to tell them. So I got from them a list of the contacts who are their best friends at school and masters they like, people they met, mums and dads. I said, ring your mum and dad and say it's all okay. So during those first six months I went up to Liverpool first of all and I was desperate to see Pete Best. I'm sure you all know most of you know the Beatles story and Pete Best was the drummer who got the push when Ringo came along. Poor old Pete Best who had been with them for two or three years in Hamburg was written out of the story. And I wanted to see Pete Best even though I was doing the, I didn't call it that, the authorised biography I was desperate to get a hold of Pete. Not just for his memories because also his mother Mona ran a little coffee bar club where the Beatles played before the graduates of the Cavern. So she had a big influence on her life. So I rang her and wrote to her and she wouldn't see me. She said, why should I see you? The Beatles were horrible to my Pete. But she let me come and say I'm in a very posh house and in Heymans Green in Liverpool. And the basement was where she'd had this little coffee bar. And so again she said, why should I help you? The Beatles were horrible. So I said, look, even though it's official biography I want to hear your story and I promise I will write it down as you tell me. So I talked her into it and suddenly the door opened and Pete had me listening to the whole conversation. And he came in wearing a white uniform and he'd come from the night shift in the bakery where he was slicing bread for eight shillings an hour or eight shillings a day, some appalling low wage. And he looked tired and a bit depressed but I talked to him and he told me all about his life and what it was like when the Beatles sacked him. Whatever it was five years earlier, four years earlier. I went to see the mums and dads and this was, I wish really I'd written more about this because it was to me, it was the first time I'd seen. In fact it's the first time really in British sort of social history that their sons had become at the age of 18 to 20 incredibly famous, incredibly wealthy and incredibly powerful and they'd become in a way monsters. It was the worst of a thing, the childless father of the man. They were household names and the speed at which this happened happened steady all the time with footballers. I actually did Wayne Rooney's biography 40 years later and it was strange going to Liverpool to see Wayne Rooney's mum and dad and it took me back 40 years to see the Beatles mums and dad and they'd moved from their council house or their terrace house into these suburban posh houses and Ringo's mum and dad was just stuck there in Aspic. There were still next door neighbours and accountant and a doctor and they couldn't speak to them, didn't know the area and all the furniture was still covered in plastic and they were like rabbits that were caught and even though I'd spoken to them before they really talked to me they had to ring Ringo to say they were so scared to talk. Paul's dad was lovely. Paul's dad was actually one of nature's gentlemen. He always wore a little flower and even though he was a cotton salesman I never got out what that meant and you know that Paul's dad, Jim, brought up the two boys when the mother died and he'd just recently got married and the family didn't quite like the new one they'd married but he lived in a lovely house in the Wirral, Heswell and he had a conservatory and he had Vine and Paul had brought him up and he was a lovely man and I liked his new wife because the boys were growing up. I remember while I stayed the evening with Jim McCartney Paul sent up the acetate of what I'm 64 which is written for Jim and we all played it over and over the whole evening dancing round. I went to see George Harrison's mother was lovely because she'd supported them all the way through. I went to see Mimi so all the mums and dads had been moved from their house mainly because they were being pestered. They couldn't live there anymore for the fans. Same thing happened with Wayne Rooney. They moved from their council house. It was even worse because their house had been vandalised first of all by Liverpool fans when he played for Everton so they had to move and Mimi had moved right away and she'd moved to Canforth Cliffs in Bournemouth and the South Coast. So I went down to see Mimi Mimi for those who don't know brought up John from the age of five and Mimi was telling me how that she'd had to leave Liverpool, she'd been ill and she got up and she heard somebody downstairs thinking the doctor had come and she came downstairs and three girls had got in somehow and they were ratching through her sewing basket and she screamed at them, what are you doing? And they said let's look in for any buttons that John might have had on his coat. This was pre-Beatle mania. This was the early days of just the mercy side mania and that's really what made her think she's got to get out she can't stand the kids coming to the front door and as we were sitting at Canforth Cliffs overlooking the sea in a smart bungalow there was a boat going past down below and as it was going past I could hear a voice saying Ladies and gentlemen, look left and you'll see John Lennon's Auntie Mimi sitting on her back garden and she had absolutely hysterics. I went to Hamburg and in Hamburg I tracked down Astrid and people that know the Beatles saga Astrid was engaged to Stu Sutcliff who was a member of the Beatles he was the brightest talent at Liverpool College of Art and was John's best friend and he won some money and John made him buy a guitar and made him join the group and while they were in Hamburg he fell in love with Astrid and then he died of a brain hemorrhage. The thing about the Hamburg years they were... I went to great trouble in the book to try and get it straight because I realised it was so important to them the Hamburg years because they really became themselves they came from Liverpool while they were in Hamburg it's like James Joyce going to Paris to write about Dublin it was being away and also they perfected their music and also when they were in Liverpool I have to choose my words carefully because there is several girls here tonight who went to the Cavern Club the Cavern Club was school girls and secretaries and hairdressers the fans they got in Hamburg apart from the drunken sailors were intellectuals were art students and they could see things in the Beatles especially in Stu and John which they loved and Astrid took these amazing photographs of the Beatles I still think today these are the best photographs ever taken of the Beatles there's one famous one it looks like a railway station or a railway siding but it's actually a fairground so I went to see her and she hadn't been interviewed and she was in a flat that was totally black black walls, black candles black carpets and she was still in mourning for Stu the one who died, whatever it was this is where I get things wrong three or four years earlier and she I talked to her and she was very good and all the Beatles on their characters gave me really good insight and then I went with her that evening and she was working in a lesbian club and she was serving in the bar or she was dancing if you arrived without a girl you could dance with Astrid I don't know what gigolo is a man so gigola is such a noun and I couldn't believe that she was doing this humdrum job yet she was sitting on this massive archive of photographs later on many years later she did do books and did do her photographs so I came back to London after the six months wandering around and I saw the Beatles again and I said oh I've seen Pete Best and they all changed the subject they didn't want to know because they've been horrible to Pete Best and they had hidden behind Brian that made Brian do the dirty deed getting rid of them there's another element to the Pete Best thing which I knew at the time but I couldn't write and it was that Neil Aspinall their roadie and the Beatles best friend had had an affair and a child by Mona Best are you with me? Mona Best Pete's mum so when Pete got the sack there was this other element in the background which nobody in Liverpool knew that the Beatles were getting rid of Pete Best and yet Neil, their roadie and really the manager in the early days was the mother's lover when I told them about Astrid they were fascinated by Astrid and I then started interviewing them properly and one of the first real events I went to was the Maharishi I was rung up the night before by Michael McCartney Paul's brother who said there's going to be a happening tomorrow I said oh yeah he said I would come down to Euston Station we're going to Bangor I said Bangor so I went down to Euston Station and the night before the Beatles had met Maharishi the Hilton and it turned out TM, Transinternal Meditation were having a conference at Bangor and they all decided to go so I went down to Euston Station and even though they'd only decided the night before there was holds of screaming kids and it was chaos on the platform and by a sequence of events the roadies Neil and Mal got left behind and Cynthia and wife of John got left behind so I found myself on the train going to Bangor in that first class compartment which was the old fashion sort with banquets and a door into the corridor the four Beatles dressed in all that 60s finery Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful so I sat in his carriage for four hours going up to Bangor and every station even though as I say it'd been a last minute decision there'd be kids on the platform because in those days you could open the window shoving books through for the Beatles to autograph which they mostly did but John would get fed up and say I'm not signing all these autographs so I used to sign if they got all the other ones I would sign John's name and when these autographs come up at Sotheby's and there's somebody from Sotheby's here that's seen me I keep thinking I wonder if that's one of mine when we got to Bangor we met the Maharishi and we all got our mantra and then we went out that evening to a Chinese restaurant in Bangor this was in the summer of 67 and the university college or whatever it was at the time was on vacation so they were staying there and we went to this restaurant and had a very good meal just me and the Beatles I don't think Mick Jagger came and it turned out the bill came to something like 30 pounds and I only had 10 pounds on me the roadies had still not arrived and as soon as the Beatles became famous in 1963 say they became like the Royal Family like the Queen and didn't carry money so they hadn't carried money and we were late at night and the waiters were standing at the background listening to the Scouse Accidents thinking this is typical saturday night these lads come across from Liverpool run up a bill and they're going to do a runner so they started closing the doors and I said these are our famous pop group I'll come back tomorrow and pay the bill don't worry and they were sharpening knives and it was getting really, they wouldn't believe it and suddenly George put his foot on the table and he had a sort of homemade Indian Periw sandal real leather and he got a knife from the table and he started to slip round there and out of the soul of his sandal he took a £20 note which he'd put there the day he became a multimillionaire thinking one day it's going to happen and so it happened that was the weekend that we heard that Brian had died it wasn't suicide although he had been suicidal and he had tried to commit suicide some months earlier and left a note which I've never found but it was just to go back I forgot to tell you about on that train journey I studied John and Mick Jagger for a long time trying to get the dynamics and they were friendly enough but they weren't saying much and a few months later when I was interviewing John properly I said I study you on the train how do you get on with them you're not jealous of them I certainly not but I am of what the I stand on stage and swear and spit and pick their nose and wear scruffy awful clothes and be ugly and be people that scared the mummers and dads that was the image whereas the image of the Beatles was mop tops clean and lovely and smiley and lovely clothes and they did that because Brian said you won't get anywhere in London unless you do it and John hated that and regretted he had been so craven to agree to all this so he'd always been jealous of the Beatles of the Rolling Stones being able to act and dress the way they wanted to and I said to him but look the Beatles when the Beatles first came along people actually thought they were amazingly refreshing and natural they weren't wearing shiny suits they didn't say you're a lovely audience and I mean that very sincerely it was that refreshing reality that appealed to people the Rolling Stones wouldn't have gone away with being the Rolling Stones how they appeared if you hadn't come first so I started doing all the interviews and I went to all the houses and I went to see John and I were going to see John in Kenwood and I arrived and it turned out it was a day for not talking so I opened the door not talking Cynthia made us a meal not talking we sat and watched children's afternoon it was a big house but he just crouched in one little room watching children's television not talking and then we went round I had a swim in his swimming pool I thought bloody I've come on this way and he's day for not talking and I swam in his pool not talking but while we were in the pool Kenwood where he lived is in a very smart estate called Carlson George's Hill and down below is the village of Waybridge and while I was swimming around we could hear a police siren making the noise they make today and he started playing with that it's not a tune it's a rhythm and he started going which became across the universe and he started thinking of it then but it was some years later before he really knocked it in shape because John would start things and not finish them and get bored and fed up the best fun of all during the book was of course being in Abbey Road during the making mainly of Sergeant Pepper so I would go round the afternoon because we still live in the same house in North London just as Paul does and I would go to Paul's house and I'd probably have a fry up with him because he wasn't a vegetarian in those days and we got with Martha who was Martha? the dog Martha my dear and I remember one day we went in his little mini car and we drove to Primrose Hill with Martha and we were walking up Primrose Hill and it was very early in the year about April and first daffs were appearing and it was getting warm and sunny and I said to him it's getting better meaning spring is coming and the weather is getting better and he said yes and laughed he said again it is getting better you've got to admit it's getting better and I said why is that expression funny he said when we were in Australia on the world tour Gringo was ill for a while and a stand in drama came called Jimmy Jimmy Nickel and after every concert John would turn to Jimmy and say how's it going Jimmy and Jimmy said only the same thing over and over again it's getting better and they used to mock him for saying so Paul this phrase made him laugh and actually as he walked home and talked about it he started singing you've got to admit it's getting better and we came back went to Paul's up to his little studio and he then John arrived and this is what they did during Sgt Pepper by this stage most of the songs were wholly written by one of them but they would bring it in for the other one to knock in the shape or to help with now and again it was a mad panic at the end they'd do a song together like a little help from my friends they needed that for Gringo so John would come and they would sit out at the top and work on it's getting better and they would ask people in the room like me or Cynthia or Terry Doran oh we can't have that and I remember sitting in that little room and looking out of the Paul's front yard his lovely Georgian mansion and you see heads appearing girls heads appearing or the wall would be hanging on trying to see if they're in and then they would drop and disappear and then they would come back again and then we would then go round to Abbey Road and they would do the double tracking they would start with the backing and after hanging around for months I was allowed to sit in the bowels of the Abbey Road upstairs would be a glass panel where George Martin was and the technicians and if Mick Jagger came or the wives came that was where they sat but I was allowed to sit down below but I never took notes I just helped to put the symbols out so I watched it happening and while during these three months or so at the end of this session they would have scraps of paper on which they had written the words of the song they were working on they would write out again when Ringo came they would order Ringo on toast that was always John's silly joke let's have Ringo on toast and Ringo would have brought in and I would pick up if it was a song like It's Getting Better or songs that are particularly seen all the way through and wanted to write about in the book I would pick them up and say can I have this? they said yes because the cleaners are going to bin them so 90% of these scraps were burned by the cleaners and the thing about the Beatles you've got to remember how young they were they had no interest in from whence they had come they had no interest in what they had done yesterday and the whole part of being in the studio was to record the song so therefore why would they keep the scrap of paper the scrap of paper that sung the words and record it in play so they got it down Georgia got it on so they had no interest in keeping these bits and pieces this happened to them much later in his 50s and 60s Paul has been and Yoko are acquiring things behind the scenes a lot of the stuff that's sold at Sotheby's but in these days they had no interest so these particular bits that I picked up I picked up and kept them safely while I was doing the book I stupidly never used a tape recorder I had tried a tape recorder on the Sunday Times once I had gone to see W.H. Orden which would have been my first mega interview and I went to see him at Stephen Spender's house and I was told by the literature editor Leonard Russell to give this envelope to Orden and I thought well I better take a tape recorder and I got a grandeur it was the size of this room absolutely enormous and I was so obsessed by I couldn't really get it to work I gave Orden, I actually looked in the taxi at what was in this envelope and it was 30 brand new pound notes and the minute I gave it to Orden he had no interest in me no interest in answering the question he got his money, God knows what the money was for so I was obsessed by this stupid grundic thing and he wasn't interested and the interview never appeared so I never used a tape recorder so if only I used a tape recorder when I was interviewing the Beatles for those 18 months some people later, such as Barry Miles with Paul did it on tape recorder didn't you Barry? I wish I'd done it what I did do, when I was in the in the bowels of when they were making their music or when I went to the Sergeant Pepper photograph session the famous Peter Blake one I wouldn't write notes then I would just be hanging around by the way I took one of the objects and that famous Sergeant Pepper photograph it's a sort of funny obelisk I was in Paul's house and we're getting ready to go and he said we've got the flowers in the front the crocus is spelling Beatles let's put some objects in, look around the room so I just took it from his mantel piece and I got to the flood street I got to where the photograph was taking place and I put it down and it stayed there and you can see where I put it anyway at that session I didn't write notes but it was amazing because in the corner was a statue of, not a statue a cut out of Hitler they were going to have Hitler in the line-up of all the famous gurus and the famous people and at the last minute John Ewing talked out of it look at the trouble he had with Jesus and when I came home that evening I and when I came home from it listening to the music being I would write my notes up immediately which was still in my head and I've got those pages of saying and Hitler was watching to describe what it was when I was at the houses individual houses doing one-to-one interviews I would get my little notebook out and I would write down the memories of school and the answers and the first impressions and so I've got 40 little red notebooks and I can't read a bleeding word by writing so apolly but the other day I was looking up something and I found out when I was interviewing Paul I was asking him the famous meeting with John at Wilton Parish Church when the quarrymen were playing and John Paul was brought around by a mutual friend and afterwards he plays his guitar 20 flight rock and John's impressed and I asked him to join and I was saying to Paul can you remember what was John wearing when you first met him and he drew a beautiful cartoon drawing because Paul's a very good artist he did a lovely drawing of John Lennon the day he met him with his slick back hair and his teddy boy style and that stood in that notebook I haven't been through these 40 notebooks but they're going to the British Library if they want them those scraps I picked up I then kept them safely at home all the books I've done I've done a book on Hadrian's Wall and I kept all the fort tickets I kept all the museum guides I kept the bus tickets I keep everything I did a book about football I kept the laundry list for the football team and of course I kept all the Beatles stuff and the ones that become valuable the rest are not valuable before the end of the book I didn't want to stop writing the book because the Beatles every time I saw them they were into something new intellectually or spiritually or musically and they were changing all the time and as anybody here was alive in the 60s every new album that came out was the most amazing event because you knew it wouldn't be like the last one sorts of music new songs obviously but new influences and new background music and I had to rush at the final moment I tracked down Ringo's real dad Ringo's mum had split from his dad I've forgotten what age two years old and the dad had disappeared in his life never reappeared even though Ringo was now a multimillionaire and I thought I must get because I want to know where the stars come from the starkies I should say and I tracked him down and he was a window cleaner and crew and I remember going to see him and I wrote him a thank you to Mr Starchy and I spelled Starchy wrong and he told me off misspelling his name and just before the book went to press I made contact with Freddie Lennon Freddie did a runner when John was very little and Julia got a new partner and Mimi brought up but when John became famous the bold Freddie reappeared and gave interviews to a valet he was a washer up and somebody said, Lennon isn't your name Lennon, this is one of those Beatles oh really and you realise the sun when we hadn't seen for 40 years 20 years, 15 years was now the famous John Lennon and he got his teeth done and he cut a record but he couldn't pay for his teeth and then the Daily Express tried to spring him on John and we didn't manage it the big thing was that Mimi had blackened Freddie's name and John knew that Mimi would be absolutely furious if that she knew that he was seeing Freddie Lennon that Freddie so I managed to track Freddie down at the last minute and he was washer up in a hotel a roadside hotel in someone like Twickenham not very far from where John was living and he was in his 50s and he was having an affair with an 80 year old girl who was doing part time relief and she was at Exeter University a world brought up a middle house girl how he'd managed to capture this girl I don't know so I talked to Freddie and I got from Freddie his life story how his father had been a Kentucky minstrel in America and been there and played music and how Freddie met the mother got the whole story I don't know how much he exaggerated so I just slapped it all down and I thought he was witty and amusing and funny so next time I saw John I said I met your dad so he's a bit cage at first and I said yeah he's hilarious John always said when people asked him what would you do in life if you hadn't been a beetle Paul could have been anything Paul's multi talented Paul could have been an artist or a professor or worked at the British Library he could have done lots of things but John always knew he'd probably ended up as a bum and probably ended up like his dad washing dishes because he wasn't a good enough artist to get a job and he was untidy and filthy and his drawings were sweet and funny so he always said he would have ended up like Freddie not having met Freddie so he said where is he living so he then wrote a letter to Freddie and swore Freddie oh the letters in the book by the way he swore Freddie to secrecy in case Mimi finds out and Freddie arise with his girlfriend Pauline John finds them absolutely hysterical and lets him move in lets the girlfriend move in and then they get married and he pays for the wedding and then he goes off them but he buys them a flat and then Freddie disappears from his life but Freddie gets married so Pauline Lennon who's not coming to this event alas she's too busy Pauline Lennon is really John's step mother and she's helped me with some letters so I did those two people at the very end and I did them very quickly finding them all the Beatles had to read the book and they had no objections Brian was dead and his mother inherited my contract she was called Queenie and she said Brian was not homosexual now I wanted to put it in because one of the strange things about Brian was why I should this middle class public school boy who like Sibelius have gone to the cavern to listen to these boys and it was because he fantasized John the Butch John and that's really and Brian it was an awkward time because the Wolfman Report was coming out but I did put in that Brian was a gay bachelor but he had girlfriends but he never married so he got it between the lines I didn't do one of the things, one of the book came out people said especially in America it was amazingly realistic and truthful and honest and searing I did have the F word in it I did have LSD I did have John screaming shouting and being but I didn't go into the groupies and I've been accused by the Dihar Beatle fans ever since for doing a whitewash by not explaining what happened in the dressing rooms and the hotels and the reason for doing it was that I thought everybody alive there adult knew what pop stars are like and I thought I didn't have to go into it and it wasn't really relevant whereas I felt Brian's sexuality was relevant to the story and also all four Beatles were happily partnered or married and nobody asked me not to do it but I thought it would be embarrassing for them to draw attention to the oldies in the dressing rooms but then I got a letter from John saying Mimi's having hysterics will you go down to Bournemouth and calm her down and I went to see her she got a whole little copy somehow and she said John never swab in his little boy and he didn't steal and I don't want it in the book and I said well it's John's story I can't change it I can't alter it, I can't put words into his mouth so in the end we compromised and I put at that particular chapter a paragraph from Mimi at the very end of this chapter when John's doing all these awful things and I cut Mimi's saying and Mimi said that John's childhood he was as happy as the day was long so that kept her happy the Beatles I kept those manuscripts at home in a drawer the Beatles lyrics and I put them on the wall there were my children became teenagers and had awful parties and I thought oh god somebody is going to be sick over them and I woke up one day in 1981 or two when Sotheby's had the first sales of Beatles lyrics and I found I got nine of them and I realised the lyrics the scraps of paper were worth more than my house so I thought oh god I like them all I don't want to sell them because they got a very successful hard working wife I don't need the money and Paul would never speak to me again but I want them all kept together I remember talking to Graham C. Green who was the boss of Jonathan Cape and he had some Graham Green stuff and he'd offered at the British Museum and said oh no we don't want that try the Bodleian so I ran the British Museum and they were absolutely thrilled as Jamie said and they went into the the manuscript room at the British Museum and now when the British Museum moved here they've gone in the manuscript and you know here as Jamie said the next to Magna Carta and the next to Shakespeare when the Queen opened the British Library and was taken round the case with the Beatles stuff in my name is not on them you don't know who it is but you see these scraps and now these days you can listen to the tunes as you're reading the Queen apparently stood and spent a long time she couldn't read the words of Magna Carta no more than David Cameron can read the words of Magna Carta no more than I can because it's in Mediolatyn but of course she could read the words of yesterday so in my will they go to the nation so I'm thrilled if you haven't seen them go and have a look at them and they're still there upstairs I'm now going to tell you about I can't see the time I'm going to tell you about the dark, the letters how I came to the letters I told you how I used to run the Atticus column six months before I did the Beatles biography I met Yoko before she met John one day in 66 I think the phone rang and this strange sounding woman the strange sounding accent said I'm told you the most famous columnist in London will you appear in my bottoms film I said what, well bottoms film and I said piss off I was convinced it was a friend from the Observer but in 1966 there were only two papers really there was no Sunday Telegraph hadn't been invented there was no Mail on Sunday and therefore we were in deadly rivalry with Penn Dennis on the but of course we all knew each other and the joy of being a journalist in the 60s was not only you went out and interviewed the people you left the office if you had a story with your name on on the Sunday Times and the Sunday everybody you met in the next day would have read it because there's only two the Jimmy Porter thing getting the Sunday papers they weren't as big as they are today because the ones or the supplements they were quite thin so the normal middle class educated or whatever person would get the Observer on the Sunday Times and your stuff now today I feel sorry for journalists today there's so many papers and broadcasters and television there's no way of everybody seeing what you're proud of because it's all dissipated so I thought it was she said no no I've come from America I'm doing this film so she told me the details I said well I can't appear in it my agent will not allow it so I went down to Park Lane and she put an advert on the stage you know the stage the newspaper of the acting profession and the advert said word to effect would you like to appear in a film your appearance is guaranteed but there'd been no fee so I went down to Park Lane and all these out of work actresses and actresses were queuing up and they went into this room in Park Lane door and there was a sort of children around about Rondeville and as they went through the door the girls had totally taken their knickers down and the boys had totally taken their trousers down and they stood on this Rondeville and there was a fixed camera filming the bottoms and that was the film I did a slightly tongue in cheek Mickey taking peace about it in my column I remember the headline I used because the headline has been used a million times since it's a very corny joke oh no oh no that same week I'd been to Manchester University and I'd interviewed the first female president of the Manchester Students Union absolutely stunning girl called Anna Ford and she became the television personality and news reader and I had the headline of her ah ha and ah so it was oh no oh no anyway Yoko rang me up and said thanks for the publicity that was very kind of you and I forgot all about it so six months later I went into Abbey Road now doing the biography and as I said earlier people weren't allowed on the bowels on the main floor arm in arm entwine with John and so I met her then and recognised her and I stayed family with her and she sent me postcards and Sean was born I got stuff and then can't remember how many years ago I said to her there should be a book about John's letters I've got three letters from John Lennon I can let you read them I can burn them but what I can't do is publish them in a magazine or a book the laws of copyright are roughly the same all around the world for 70 years from the death of the person the state in this case it's Yoko owns the copyright and you can't publish them without permission ah next year Basics Potter will be dead 70 years anybody can rip off Basics Potter's letters so I've had these letters and the thing about John Lennon was that he lived and died and he wrote his letters pre-email and I know because of my three letters what a witty, amusing letter writer he was in fact his first reaction to most emotions anger, fury, disgust was to not just go to a guitar or a piano but to write it down we know about his two books and he'd been writing all his childhood scribbles and stories and poems and he when he wrote a letter to somebody is first of all amusing himself and secondly tailors it to the person he's writing to and so there's jokes and references to do with the person he's writing to and my idea was I'd use his letters if I could find them to tell John's life story in letters because I feel that letters are the closest way you get to a person because they're not when you're writing for publication they're writing getting rid of an emotion straight immediately there and then and I think for example with Virginia Woolf's letters are brilliant even more amazing than her diaries because the diaries in half of mine I think she's thinking they'll be published but in a letter she's throwing them off and they're amazing and John's are the same but they don't exist there are no John then in letters I've got three in fact over the last three years three because John then and when you're doing a book after a book on Robert Louis Stevenson and Wordsworth when people have been dead for a long time the letters accumulate in various places such as Dove Cottage or a museum or the British Library so they're all together but when somebody's been dead for only a short time as with John the recipients in the main still have the letters or you have stage two which is they've sold them and a collector has them so Yoko eventually agreed to my idea one of the ways I've talked her into it was the fact that I said the obvious thing I thought Beatles founds in the world at large would like to see his writing because you get an insight into his character I also said that I'm going to build this book up to the story of what John was doing at the time who the recipient was the relationship of the recipient and I'll tell you the contents of the letter but the sooner I do this book the better because the recipients are dying Derek Taylor the most lovely man who was the PR for the Beatles he's dead he got lots of letters and I need to be able to contact as many of those as possible for them to explain because I won't get the jokes and that really she agreed to it she first said it's too personal but in the end she said no you can do it but she's got no letters from John Lennon they had that one long time when they were apart when he was in California and they rang each other 20 times a day she had some scraps but I think they got still them so I've had to find the 300 letters that I wrote everybody that was related to John to his half sisters Julia and Jackie and they were very helpful to Pauline Lennon to his cousin David Birch who's never really been interviewed probably but he's got a first cousin who was very helpful and then I thought of all the people who might have got letters from him and then I talked to collectors and I contacted Sotheby's Bonham's and Christie's and they were helpful I remembered one person that I met in 1977 by Centinlia I went to America on the QE2 and on the boat a man came up to me and said I did enjoy your Beatles biography my name is Bill Martin and I'm a songwriter and it turned out he wrote congratulations and Puppet on a String and all the bass that he wrote hits I said oh amazing and he said I live in Kenwood and I said no John's house I've bought it I said how amazing so we chatted and I saw him on the boat a few time for drinks and then for 30 years I'd forgotten all about him but when I started this project I thought I wonder if Bill Martin never got a letter from John Lennon where's Bill Martin so I tracked him down and said did you write to John and it turned out he had after he bought the house he wrote to John and said I'm now on your house the pool is rubbish, it's still leaking when you were living here what songs did you write living in Kenwood and you wrote the letter back giving all the songs so for music colleges and the world is full of them that's a fascinating document so I had such good luck with that sort of person coming forward and giving me the letters and I've got 300 in all and a lot of these people have come here this evening a lot of them I don't know face to face but they've been absolutely so helpful some of them are some of the letters in the book and the critics will probably say these say this are totally banal and totally bread and butter two pints a day please milkman but the reason for using them is that very often there's a good story attached with a really trivial letter for example there's one letter that says to Lizzie thanks for a lovely year John Lennon and this is a letter to a girl called Lizzie Bravo in 1967 she's a middle class girl from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and her mum as a present gave her the money to come to London and she came with a girlfriend and all that came to do didn't tell the mother was to hang around Abbey Road and there were the people climbing on the wall outside Paul's house and hanging around Abbey Road now one evening outside Abbey Road their fantasy came true the door of Abbey Road opened it was a Sunday evening and Paul came out and there were wee screams and he says can any of you girls hold a note and they all put their hands up and he picks to Lizzie Bravo and another girl and they go inside and that evening they are they had the thought of trying to get all singers to come in but it was Sunday evening and the girls sang they were doing across the universe the one I mentioned earlier and the girls were to sing for two hours the same two lines the same one line nothing's gonna change my world nothing's gonna and they got all the Beatles autographs when I first read this scrap that she sent me I thought oh it's a groupie it's a one night stand but it was a total lovely relationship so isn't that a good story she's now a grandmother living in Brazil and there's a folk singing I'll tell you one little story I hope she's coming this evening a girl called Tolly Onan I think I've got the name right is that her oh god I might have got this wrong but this woman this girl was aged about she was living in England and she's Mongolian background and she this was towards the last year of John's life and she don't correct me Tolly she wrote to John because she was she loved what he was doing for peace and she loved him marrying Yoko and bringing East and West together because in her background and she wrote a letter to them and John read this letter and he gave two interviews he gave the famous last interview to the BBC with Andy Peebles and he gave another interview in which he mentioned this Mongolian girl who had written to him he didn't say her name he didn't say any clues in fact if you listened to this thing you would think it was like politicians say and a constituent told me only last week or I met somebody in the butchers you thought it was made up but Tolly wrote to me I don't know how she knew I was doing the book but I told everybody letter postcard which nobody ever seen from John John sent the postcard back to her and this little girl Tolly Onam who was 14 now is now a professor and consultant gynaecologist in Manchester and she's come here this evening isn't that a brilliant story so one of the pleasures for me and there's about a hundred stories like that in the book which I've tried to tell connected with it so I think I'm going to show the the film now this has got nothing to do with John Lennon this film and my wife says you're absolutely stupid nobody wants to see this silly film it's I made this joke of being a world premiere it's a super 8 film which I did of all my little children in the 60s and then I spliced it together I got burn holes all over the place if you remember super 8 no sound after the Beatles book came out I don't know what I've got my specs on after the Beatles book came out we had a year abroad our children were 4 and 5 or 3 and 5 or 4 and 6 and I thought this is a fantasy that all writers have they all say oh if I make any money I'm going abroad I'm not coming back here I'll be in the south of France so we did it for a year it was utterly boring and we rented a house at Prada Lug which is the place where the girl was abducted from remember Madeleine and we were living in a converted sardin factory right on the Prada Lug beach there was no Lug bay club there was no modern buildings this is 1968-69 and in the middle of the night one night there was a stunning house and the big wall garden not wall garden, wooden fence garden we had a gardener that came with it and a housekeeper and the garden was full of statuary and lovely plants it was owned by apparently a gynaecologist from Belfast so gynaecologists do well don't they and we just rented it for the winter cheaply because it was the winter two in the morning I had the most awful banging shouting on the big wooden door outside and I heard a gruff Portuguese voice and I could hear Hunter Davish, your lazy bastard get up and I thought it was John Lennon because the voice was so raucous and it was Paul so I went outside and there was a taxi driver looking worried and Paul was with a blonde American girl I've never seen him in my life before because when I last seen Paul he was engaged to Jane Asher that was it and there was a little girl with them called Heather Linda's daughter and there was an IRA taxi driver who had just driven 80 kilometers from Faroe Airport which hadn't long opened a year or two and Paul had no money what had happened in London that evening in St John's Wood he'd just met Linda and Linda's child had arrived from the father of the child Linda's term and he thought we'll go and see Hunter Hunter's got two children about this age Paul adores children so he said to Neil the roadie get us on a plane to Faroe and Neil comes back and said all the planes have gone we'll hire one so they're hired a private jet and they left within half an hour having thought about it and he left so quickly he brought two things he brought a bottle of whiskey half from my wife of course and he brought a 50 pound note it's a Faroe airport in the middle of the night because it didn't come to our house till so our private jet arrives Paul has got a big beard as you will see in a minute and you couldn't really tell who it was but a private jet in the middle of the night he staggers around the airport and he sees some official looking person and said oh can you change this into a scooter it gives this man the 50 pound notes then over there he sees a taxi driver and says taxi and he runs off leaving his bloat with a 50 pound note and never sees him again so he jumps in the taxi with no money so I pay off the taxi driver and they come inside and we have some cocoa I should think and settle down and put them in bedrooms and they stayed with us for three weeks coming up to Christmas and we had a brilliant time and Paul hired a car we had a rail once because he would drive the car on my oldest daughter who was here this evening on his knee he would let her drive the car and I said don't be stupid if you crash it he said they've got to learn he brought his guitar with him and he once he had hysterics when he found out my name first Christian name is not Hunter I never revealed this because I never knew it myself till I was 11 my full name is Edward Hunter Damus but I've never ever been called Edward now and again at secondary school the nurse would come looking for nits and would say Edward come out and I would think who was Edward poor sort of having and it was me so he laughed at this and I said you need to because your first name is not Paul Paul's first name is James and we went to the laboratory this evening with his guitar because he took it and he came back and sang me a song which went as follows but my voice is going there you go Eddie Eddie Eddie there you go Eddie Eddie you've gone and I never heard anything else about that until somebody somebody sent me a bootleg you know bootlegs are the sort of stolen somehow from the recording studio some of the people have they've been recording and I could hear him singing this song to John and he has another verse to it by that time and the other verse is not very flattering the other verse goes you think you're in with the in crowd which I'm sure I never thought I was but it was never recorded wouldn't that be marvellous if it's so the next day the press arrive from Lisbon and I'm absolutely amazed but it's some day at the airport had realised who Paul was and the word went round and they said the beatle has arrived so the press arrived and during these three weeks what was funny after you're going to see this little film what was funny was that for two or three days all the people from Lagos which is the local lovely town arriving all day long giving free things wine and fruit and meat and that was my first observation of what we all know the rich people don't pay the rich people get things for nothing the richer you are the more free things you get and all this free stuff was coming because they wanted Paul to go to his restaurant or use his butchers or whatever so the press arrived from Lisbon and he agreed to give one little press conference on the beach and said that but I'm on holiday will you not come again and don't say which town or which where I'm staying and they didn't so we had three lovely weeks and we had a great time all the trains the outside noise an old tollgate all the trains that go to the tollgate they're going to pay no man so money but if you've got several things on board then you don't have to pay the man nothing there's a train that's coming down the line Olsen, I've got a pump I've got a live star live star and it says ok boys just to get on through we're going to pay no man the train goes through I get to have a little bit of steam a little bit of steam and the else right down the line and I said I've pulled the year I've pulled the year