In conversation with Craig Brown - 1,2,3,4: The Beatles in Time

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Award 2020
A Spectator Book of the Year
A Sunday Times Book of the Year
A Telegraph Book of the Year

It’s fifty years since the dissolution of The Beatles. Whether you are a Beatles ‘superfan’ or someone who just wants to know what the Beatlemania fuss is all about, Essex Book Festival and Anglia Ruskin University have teamed up to host a very special event featuring arch-satirist Craig Brown, who will be talking to BBC Essex’s Tony Fisher about his latest multi award-winning book: 1 2 3 4: The Beatles in Time.

Craig Brown steps back in time to retrace The Beatles’ odyssey from The Cavern to the Port of Harwich where they set sail for Hamburg to play ninety-two days consecutively without a break, to one of the world’s most famous Break-Up’s on 10th April in 1970 when Paul McCartney issued a press release saying he was no longer part of the band.

A kaleidoscopic mix of party lists, diaries, autobiography, anecdotes, diaries and fan letters, 1 2 3 4 not only captures the inner world of The Beatles, but also the wider world of the era: The Swinging Sixties, replete with the advent of the Women’s Lib Movement, Mary Quant’s outrageously short mini-skirts and Audrey Hepburn’s iconic beehive, plus the explosion of new writers, artists, musicians, including the likes of Andy Warhol, Alan Sillitoe and The Kinks.

It also provides tantalising insights into The Beatles ‘back-story’: the people who played such a pivotal part in The Beatles story. Whether that’s John Lennon’s Aunt Mimi, his father Fred Lennon, The Maharishi, Yoko Ono, Brian Epstein, Phil Spector, or Mohammad Ali.