Unhealed hurt renders the post-divorce parts of John fitfully interesting, as Cynthia deplores her faithless husband's emotional cowardice and Yoko's unfathomable control-freakery. The passing decades have made her somewhat more frank about her grievances. In A Twist of Lennon, Cynthia was reluctant to speak ill of anyone, even Yoko, whom she did not blame for taking John because "he had never been mine". He wrote about every aspect of their stay, including those he would never have wanted his family to know about." A pity, then, that Cynthia destroyed or sold off these letters, and must rely instead on what sound suspiciously like editor-penned cribs from other Fab Four books, personalised with the occasional detail such as "John and I would go across the road for fish and chips" or "the butties were long since finished".
"The story of the boys' first trip to Hamburg has now passed into legend," Cynthia burbles, "but I had my own unique perspective on it through John's many, detailed letters. In theory, the disclosures of Lennon's loyal partner from 1958 to 1968 cannot fail to be valuable. John is Cynthia's attempt to prove how much more she was worth. "That's like winning the pools, so what are you moaning about? You're not worth any more." "My final offer is seventy-five thousand pounds," John reportedly told her on the phone. Yoko inherited an endlessly regenerating fortune Cynthia got a brisk divorce settlement.
Still, as she justly points out, she had bills to pay and her share of Beatles wealth was not generous.
Given longer to reflect, she might have owned up to the features in Hello! and Q, too. She admits to having given "a couple of interviews" over the years, but eventually the number multiplies and she alludes to her regular chat spots at Beatles conventions and on TV. Cynthia gamely plays the part of the reticent ex-wife breaking silence, so her earlier autobiography, A Twist of Lennon - quite a lot of which is recycled here - is never named. Like most memoirs, John is being marketed as a story told "for the first time", but Beatles scholarship is a thoroughly strip-mined quarry and the scope for fresh discoveries is meagre.
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