Skywriting By Word of Mouth

Autobiography, excerpts of fantastical fiction and musings on the break-up of the Beatles and the pressures of celebrity. A delight for fans of John Lennon.

Had he never sung a note, John Lennon still might have made his mark - as a successor to Lewis Carroll, James Joyce and other brilliantly playful molders and expanders of the English language

John Lennon is a remarkably gifted writer

Before he was a singer, a Beatle, or a music legend, JOHN LENNON was an artist. Professionally trained, he attended the prestigious Liverpool Art Institute from 1957 to 1960. Although Lennon is best known as a singer-songwriter, his legacy was also one of social revolution, humanitarianism, and artistry. His artwork lives on as an inspiring tribute to his hope for global peace and love.

WITH AN AFTERWORD BY YOKO ONO AND ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR 
 
John Lennon wrote the material collected in Skywriting by Word of Mouth during Yoko Ono's pregnancy with Sean Lennon. After John's assassination in 1980, his manuscript was stolen from the Lennon's home. Skywriting was finally published in 1986, and it displays all of Lennon's extraordinary creativity and inventiveness with language. It includes Lennon's only piece of autobiography, 'The Ballad of John and Yoko' as well as short works of fiction, accounts of falling in love, marriage, the break-up of the Beatles and life in America.

In His Own Write & A Spaniard in the Works

A riotous collection of John Lennon's poems, stories and drawings

Lunatic humour... it defies description. It owes something to Lear's nonsense books, but from there on in Lennon is on his own... Zany, offbeat, and illustrated by his grotesque spidery pen. It jolts the reader into gusts of laughter

Irresistible...the drawings are marvellous

Fascinating.... It goes down like pure whimsy and then back-kicks like a sick mule.

Very inventive... It's all in Lennon's favour that despite the adulation and soft soap, he has remained as tough, arrogant and uncompromising

John Lennon is a remarkably gifted writer... often hilarious, clever and funny

The best books ever written by a pop star...there's no gainsaying the almost instinctive verbal dexterity of the book, enough, even at the time, to impress the TLS. And this is an age when the idea that pop stars were illiterate oiks was still very much entrenched. In fact, you could say that Lennon's crazed neologisms and language-mangling were, along with the almost insulting brevity of most of the pieces, deliberate engagements with such an idea...These books remain not only the best books ever written by a pop star - they remain the only ones needed, really...The drawings, too, are slapdash in just the right way, and are as inseparable from the text as Tenniel's are from Carroll's...I think that, as a kind of automatic writing, it does betray something of Lennon's internal state, however self-protectively offhand it looks at first sight

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SIR PAUL MCCARTNEY 
 
First published in 1964 and 1965, In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works are a brilliantly inventive and offbeat collection of John Lennon's stories, drawings and poems.

John Lennon

John Lennon was a world famous and influential singer/songwriter and former member of the Beatles. 
 
Here he discusses his life and achievements in a series of interviews from the BBC radio and TV archive: Tonight, broadcast on BBC TV, 18 June 1965 (featuring Kenneth Allsop); The World of Books, broadcast on BBC Radio, 3 July 1965 (featuring Wilfred De'Ath); The Beatles in New York, broadcast on BBC Radio, 30 August 1965 (featuring Brian Mathew); Release, broadcast on BBC TV, 22 June 1968 (featuring Peter Lewis, Victor Spinetti); BBC Radio archive interview, dated 30 March 1969 (featuring Bob Parrin); BBC Radio archive interview, dated 1 January 1970 (featuring David Wigg, Yoko Ono); The Lennon Tapes, broadcast on BBC Radio, 18 &amp; 21 January 1981 (featuring Andy Peebles, Yoko Ono). 
 
Due to the age and nature of this archive material, the sound quality may vary. 
 
©2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

John Lennon

Books by John Lennon

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