"The only way you can get the truth is from the inside, not the outside. I feel the time is right."
Cynthia, 2005
Cynthia at her first book launch party in June of 1978
Cynthia wrote two books about her life with John:
A Twist of Lennon (1978)
John (2005)
John was still alive when her first book was published, and when excerpts appeared in a newspaper, John tried to stop the publication of her book thinking that it would put him and Yoko in a bad light. However, there was no evidence of any resentment so the book came out anyway. I heard John got one of his employees to get the book for him while spending a lot of alone time in his bedroom not wanting to be disturbed. I think John did care and didn't want Cynthia to reveal the real him, in a way, he still trusted her until he heard about the book. He probably thought she would be quite betrayed and nasty especially after the way he left her. Personally, I didn't think it was a big deal. The second book, John, was much more revealing. Cynthia once said if she were to publish another book, it would be her art; maybe Julian will do something in the future?
“They all get one shot. Each chauffeur and ex-wife and ex-lover and ex-servant gets one book if they're lucky.”
John
John
A Twist of Lennon started on her meeting with John, only briefly writing about her childhood, and it ended with their divorce. Albert Goldman used Cynthia's book in his own controversial biography, The Lives of John Lennon after she refused to be interviewed by him.
"No, I didn’t, and I don’t know anyone close to him who did. I was pursued for four years when we were living in Cumbria and I’d get phone calls from one of his researchers saying that he wanted an interview and I said that no way would I help him. I read the book that he did on Elvis Presley and I was so shocked at that that I wasn’t going to help him with a book about John; there was no way I was going to be involved in it. The man is such a character assassin. The researcher even threatened to camp out opposite. He really harassed me for four years and even followed me here to the Isle of Man. He went on about how honourable this book was and what an intelligent and qualified man Albert Goldman was. How he’d interviewed all the family - I know that he did interview a cousin in Scotland. I thought I’d heard all this before. John has gone now and he doesn’t have to defend himself, he doesn’t have to fight for his reputation. He can’t. The rest of us can. It’s our duty to respond- even if it does help to sell his book. What I’ve seen so far is negative, so fabricated. It’s the most negative piece of work I have ever seen. It’s almost as if he has taken a half truth and twisted it, as far as I’m concerned, to the point of no recognition. He’s taken things from a book that I wrote called A Twist Of Lennon and he’s even twisted that. He’s taken a lot from other books, Ray Coleman’s book and Philip Norman’s book Shout! on the Beatles, and elaborated on it and twisted it. I’d like him to be portrayed as a real man, not this shadow of a man. I haven’t read John Lennon, My Brother, but it sounds okay."
Cynthia, 1988
Cynthia, 1988
Cynthia at her second book's signing in 2005
In John, Cynthia wrote more of her childhood, her life with John and after up to that point of writing (2005) with much more details, including Julian and her difficult relationship with Yoko. Cynthia once described A Twist of Lennon as a little girl's essay which I agree; it seems like it was written in a hurry and under pressure. Meanwhile, John seemed to have been under the works for over 10 years before it's release.
There are errors: the dress she described wearing to the premiere of A Hard Day’s Night was actually the dress from the premiere of Help! Ringo and Maureen got married in 1965, not 1966 (George and Pattie got married that year), and Stuart did have a girlfriend or two during art college before Astrid. Bill Harry once made a list of errors from her book- I recently tried looking for it on the internet but haven't found it at this time.
“Well, he's an old friend of mine. He went to junior art school with me and also to the college. He is a detail, data man. I'm an emotional woman. I'm writing about my life and my emotions and what happened. For me that was far more important than dates and lists of this and lists of that. There's so many books like that anyway that I wasn't writing a book about dates. For a real Beatle aficionado and fans, they know all that anyway. I've never been good at numbers, so I've no qualms about Bill. He's doing very well doing the way he does it, which is a little bit unemotional if it's all about dates and places and things and I was trying to get to the core of my relationship with John and my life with John and my son's experiences. If that had been scattered with dates then you wouldn't have gotten a story at all.”
Cynthia
When Cynthia wrote A Twist of Lennon, she was married to John Twist who encouraged her to write the book. I suppose John Twist imagined the book would open up doors of fortune. John Twist and Cynthia lived in Ireland for a year while she wrote A Twist of Lennon while Julian was at Ruthin School in 1977.
“The first book was a very cathartic situation. The reason I wrote it was not to make millions, it was to express what I’d been through and also speak to John at the time, because I was not in a position to speak to him, because he’d gone off with Yoko, so in a way it was a letter, an extended letter."
Cynthia, 2007
In 1993, it was revealed that Cynthia was writing another book but it was eventually shelved until in 2004 when Julian and his business manager suggested that she should write a book. It took six months to write until John was released in 2005.
“Cyn is writing another book, which will certainly destroy many myths. It will include a lot about Julian, who now lives in Los Angeles, as well as tell a few unpleasant truths about that woman.”
Jim Christie, Cynthia's boyfriend, 1993
“I think the sands of time are running out, actually . . . And I just wanted to balance the scales.”
Cynthia, 2005
"What’s happened since has been mega in so many ways. I’ve gone through divorce and death, inheritance problems and all of the horrors that big money brings people. I really wasn’t going to do it. Three years ago it was suggested that I write the book by Julian and his business manager. I started thinking about it and I thought it might be very good therapy. I thought it would keep me occupied and it hasn’t stopped keeping me occupied."
Cynthia, 2007
"It’s there anyway, it’s in you anyway and you’ve been through it millions of times anyway. The book took me a lifetime to live and six months to write."
Cynthia, 2007
“I think it was probably time, because in retrospect if you think of the age of all of us at this point, if you don’t get the facts down now, then you never will and if it's that important, and it obviously is, then you just do it and that’s what’s happening at the moment"
Cynthia, 2007
"I think the hardest thing for me to do was the audio book. I’m in this tiny little studio in London, earphones on, I’ve got my book in front of me, and nobody’s there and it’s freezing…I’m reading my life and I can hear my voice and that really did me in… Funnily enough it wasn’t John’s death that did it or the divorce that did it… it was actually me reading the fact that Astrid was holding Stuart as he was dying in an ambulance in Hamburg, and I just fell apart, that was the culmination of it, it had to come out somehow. I said, ‘Excuse me, I’m going to have to go outside for at least half an hour, then I’ll come back and finish it.’"
Cynthia, 2007
"Promoting the book is just me expressing and explaining what I’ve written. I’m telling the truth, if you don’t believe it, that’s fine, if you have a different viewpoint, that’s fine, because you’ve got hundreds of books that you compare my book with. I’m not demanding you buy it, you make up your own mind what your situation and your feeling for John and The Beatles is, it’s your choice."
Cynthia, 2007
My favorite part of the John book was their time in Kenwood from 1964 until 1966; John was doing his songwriting with Cynthia as his audience, their private singing duets, John spoiling his wife and son, having fun and spending whatever quality time they had of their 'John-and-Cyn’ when they can unwind, exchange gifts and notes, and be their romantic selves. My favorite part in A Twist of Lennon was their dating years of being in a local coffee shop, holding hands under the table and staring into each other's eyes.
Cynthia and Ray Coleman during the promotional tour in 1985
Besides her two books, Cynthia contributed to Ray Coleman's book, Lennon, published in 1985 and took part in UK's HELLO! magazine in six installments in 1994. Before that, she did take part of Hunter Davies biography The Beatles, published in 1968. The Beatles historians Mark Lewisohn and Martin Lewis have also interviewed her.
"I was still reeling from John's death, I had read things in other books about John that I couldn't believe. I was with him for 10 years. I know what's true about him. All these exaggerations and figments of people's imaginations were eating away at John's memory and eating away at my flesh as well. After years of being portrayed as something I'm not I thought it was time for me to have a platform. I didn't know Ray very well. We had quite a few battles at first. It's amazing we get along so well now. But I trusted his integrity. I was finally convinced that he wasn't looking for scandal. It's been very painful. When I agreed to do this promotion with Ray I didn't expect to feel this way. I agreed to do the tour because I believe in Ray and the book. But I'm reliving this thing with John over and over because I get the same questions over and over about the same painful things. It's like I have a knife in me and people keep twisting it."
Cynthia, 1985
She was also not the only wife to publish a book. Other wives have done so as well:
Pattie: Wonderful Tonight (2007)
Linda wrote a number of photography and cookbooks during her marriage with Paul but no biography unless you count her photographs as a pictorial biography.
Yoko: Grapefruit (1966) and Acorn (2013) but it's more of musings, thoughts, and poetry rather than an autobiography. She has curated a few books about John but hasn't yet written her own autobiography.
Heather: Out on a Limb (1995), A Single Step (2002), Life Balance (2006), and cookbook Love Bites (2010)
Olivia kinda wrote Living in the Material World (2011) but it is more of an accompaniment for the Martin Scorsese documentary on George as the same for Concert For George (2004) as a accompaniment for the 2002 tribute concert… not about her life.
Maureen and Barbara haven't written any books other than some interviews.
John wrote a few books, mainly his art and storytelling:
In His Own Write (1964)
A Spaniard in the Works (1965)
Skywriting by Word of Mouth (1986)
Julian also has a few books under his name, including children books:
Beatles Memorabilia: The Julian Lennon Collection (2010)
Touch the Earth (2017)
Heal the Earth (2018)
Love the Earth (2019)
Julian has considered writing an autobiography, we shall wait and see!
