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Cynthia Lennon book signing, Foyles, London

26th September 2005

After work today I caught a train up to the smoke, met up with some friends and went to a signing/event at Foyles. Cynthia Lennon was giving a talk to promote her new book, John.

Cynthia was brilliant; very funny and warm. It was wonderful to be there and special to hear her tell such personal stories at first hand. As she said, so many people have written books about John and her, but most of those people were barely around at the time, researching their books by interviewing loads of people who were hardly around at the time either. She wrote this book to correct some of the misconceptions, get her side of the story over and put something out there for Julian.

She spoke very openly about her life -- with John and without him -- and about the good bits and the bad bits of their relationsihp. She read some passages from her book, including a funny story about dinner with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and a moving recollection of how she felt when she walked in on John and Yoko for the first time. At the end she took questions from the attending crowd, some of whom seemed very emotional to be in the presence of a real live Beatle-wife. She talked throughout with compassion and it seemed at times that it was very hard for her to talk about these things -- especially about John's absence during Julian's childhood -- but she didn't seem at all bitter or want to blame anyone or anything for the way things turned out. She seemed a bit phased by the signing part (which was accompanied by Mark Pearson playing beatles songs on his guitar) but she was lovely throughout and it was a great evening.

[Cynthia]
Cynthia signing my copy of her book

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