The Beatles

THE postcard on the cover of this book says it all. The card was written by John Lennon and sent to his friend Chris Hutchins. On the card’s photograph of the Beatles, John had drawn a fifth member – the founder of the group Stuart Sutcliffe who John went on to describe as the best friend he ever had. This is the kind of confidence John, Paul George and Ringo shared with writer Hutchins who they befriended in their days as ‘unknowns’ in Hamburg. He shared their adventures during the heady days of Beatlemania; he was with them during their American tours in the 60s, sharing their euphoria and their sad moments. It was, for example, at Hutchins’ Chelsea apartment that Paul met the actress Jane Asher, who he later became engaged to. And it was Hutchins who arranged a party with Elvis Presley, the man they had always wanted to meet – alas, a meeting which was to cause a cataclysmic feud between Presley and Lennon which the author explains in detail along with how President Nixon and J Edgar Hoover got involved. This is the Beatles story from the inside . . .

Author Biography

THE writer and broadcaster Chris Hutchins is an established author of highly acclaimed biographies of the rich, the famous and the royals. His first, Fergie Confidential, was an intimate biography of the Duchess of York and chronicled her troubled marriage to the Queen’s favourite son, Prince Andrew. He followed this with a revelatory biography of the late Princess of Wales, Diana’s Nightmare: The Family, a book which soestablished him as an authority on the royals that he was invited to cover Prince Charles’ subsequent marriage for American television. Books that followed include Elvis Meets the Beatles – a rendezvous he arranged during his close association with all five – ATHINA: The Last Onassis, which probed deeply into the world of the Onassis dynasty and GOLDSMITH: Money, Women and Power, the biography of the late billionaire entrepreneur, Sir James Goldsmith. More recently Hutchins turned his attention to matters Russian with fearless biographies of the country’s leader, PUTIN, and best-known oligarch, ABRAMOVICH: The billionaire from nowhere. The author returned to the royal stage with a revealing book about Diana’s son, HARRY: The People’s Prince. As Prince Charles’ former secretary Mark Bolland says of him: ‘Chris Hutchins seems to have seen and done it all . . . ‘