The cover of the paperback version of Ian Leslie’s John and Paul comes with an extraordinary claim from British journalist Cailtin Moran celebrating ‘the first new Beatles story in decades’ (my emphasis). Really? Don’t we know everything about the band already? Do we need another book? Sure we do, after all, the Beatles are a monumental and serious subject for investigation. For instance, as Leslie recalls, the double A-sided single ‘Penny Lane’/ ‘Strawberry Fields’ was nominated by one critic as the greatest work of art of the last century. For some, this is an extraordinary claim, but then that is part of the joy of thinking about and being affected by the Beatles.
John and Paul: A love story in songs by Ian Leslie
Faber, $55 pb, 432 pp
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