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PAULINE SUTCLIFFE WITH DOUGLAS THOMPSON

The Beatles’ Shadow:

Stuart Sutcliffe and his Lonely Hearts Club

PAN BOOKS

The poignant memoir of ‘fifth Beatle’ Stuart Sutcliffe, and a remarkable chronicle of the early days of the world’s most influential pop group.

A founding member of the Beatles, Stuart Sutcliffe left the band in Hamburg to pursue his promising career as an artist, dying shortly thereafter of a brain haemorrhage. His sister Pauline, an eminent psychotherapist, sheds new light on the Beatles’ formative period – the rivalry with McCartney, the truth about Stuart’s intense relationship with Lennon and why Lennon was haunted by guilt over her brother’s death. And she describes what it was like for those like herself and Cynthia Lennon who have had no choice but to live with the Beatles all their lives.

Drawing on her own memories as well as the many letters in her possession, Pauline Sutcliffe shares her loving tribute to Stuart, who died at the age of twenty-one, but whose contribution to the Beatles’ legend lives on.