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One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time Craig Brown

One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time By Craig Brown

One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown


$27.99
Condition - Very Good
<40 in stock

Summary

From the award-winning author of Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret comes a fascinating, hilarious, kaleidoscopic biography of the Fab Four.

One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time Summary

One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown

From the award-winning author of Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret comes a fascinating, hilarious, kaleidoscopic biography of the Fab Four.

John Updike compared them to 'the sun coming out on an Easter morning'. Bob Dylan introduced them to drugs. The Duchess of Windsor adored them. Noel Coward despised them. JRR Tolkien snubbed them. The Rolling Stones copied them. Loenard Bernstein admired them. Muhammad Ali called them 'little sissies'. Successive Prime Ministers sucked up to them. No one has remained unaffected by the music of The Beatles. As Queen Elizabeth II observed on her golden wedding anniversary, 'Think what we would have missed if we had never heard The Beatles.'

One Two Three Four traces the chance fusion of the four key elements that made up The Beatles: fire (John), water (Paul), air (George) and earth (Ringo). It also tells the bizarre and often unfortunate tales of the disparate and colourful people within their orbit, among them Fred Lennon, Yoko Ono, the Maharishi, Aunt Mimi, Helen Shapiro, the con artist Magic Alex, Phil Spector, their psychedelic dentist John Riley and their failed nemesis, Det Sgt Norman Pilcher.

From the bestselling author of Ma'am Darling comes a kaleidoscopic mixture of history, etymology, diaries, autobiography, fan letters, essays, parallel lives, party lists, charts, interviews, announcements and stories. One Two Three Four joyfully echoes the frenetic hurly-burly of an era.

One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time Reviews

'A ridiculously enjoyable treat . . . Brown is such an infectiously jolly writer that you don't even need to like the Beatles to enjoy his book . . . brilliant . . . hilarious . . . And at a time when, like everybody else, I was feeling not entirely thrilled about the news, I loved every word of it.' Sunday Times

'A celestial combination of writer and subject . . . One Two Three Four is a critical appreciation, a personal history, a miscellany, a work of scholarship and speculation, and a tribute as passionate and worshipful as any fan letter.' Esquire

'The perfect antidote to these times.' Julian Barnes, Guardian

'Craig Brown's One Two Three Four is perfect for now. It's ingenious, wholly original (not a given, what with the subject matter), absolutely gripping, funny, sad and moving. A complete treat.' India Knight

'I have never been very interested in the Beatles. In fact I wouldn't cross the road to see them . . . even Abbey Road. Yet I can't put this wonderful book down.' Barry Humphries, Telegraph

'A brilliantly executed study of cultural time, social space and the madness of fame . . . the exceptional strangeness of The Beatles reflects the ordinary oddity of real life. One Two Three Four, by putting The Beatles in their place as well as their time, is by far the best book anyone has written about them and the closest we can get to the truth.' Literary Review

'We're taken on a magical mystery tour . . . Brown seems to have invented a wholly new biographical form. In a polychromatic cavalcade of chapters of varying length, the man with kaleidoscope eyes conveys what it was like to live through those extraordinary Beatles years . . . If you want to know what it was like to live those extraordinary Beatles years in real time, read this book.' Alan Johnson, Spectator

About Craig Brown

Craig Brown's last book, Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret won both the James Tait Black Prize for Biography and the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature. His previous book, One on One, was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson prize for Non-Fiction. He has been writing the parodic celebrity diary for Private Eye magazine for over thirty years, and is currently a columnist for the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday. Over the years, he has written for a wide range of newspapers and magazines, including Vanity Fair, the Sunday Times, the New Statesman, the Spectator, the Guardian and the New York Review of Books. He lives in Aldeburgh, Suffolk with his wife Frances Welch; they have two children.

Additional information

GOR010561659
9780008340001
0008340005
One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown
Used - Very Good
Hardback
HarperCollins Publishers
2020-04-02
656
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time