Product details
- ISBN 9780008809027
- Weight: 270g
- Dimensions: 159 x 240mm
- Publication Date: 27 Aug 2026
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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The unmissable memoir of a life at the heart of 60s culture – from Lennon and McCartney, to the Mersey Beat Poets and more.
Who was John Lennon’s first girlfriend? Who is the only woman to have dated Lennon and McCartney? And Tom Wolfe. And Anthony ‘Madchester’ Wilson. And married Roger McGough?
Thelma McGough is all these things – but as her captivating memoir shows, she is far more than that. While those relationships gave her a unique vantage point on the cultural revolution of the swinging sixties, her real journey has always been towards knowing who she really is – as a daughter, a partner, a mother – and crucially, in her own right.
Thelma’s astonishing life is shot through with fierce ambition to become an artist, while navigating incredible love affairs, bearing witness to pop history, raising her sons and tracing the secret at the heart of her family.
Now, she shares her story, along with diary entries, photos and letters, a journey not just from deprived wartime Liverpool through to era-defining moments in pop history, but a story of breaking the confines of class, identity and what it means to find your voice.
Thelma McGough met John Lennon and Paul McCartney as a fellow pupil at school in Liverpool, where she also later met Roger McGough, who she was married to for a decade. She went on to become a Granada television producer, where Blind Date, the series she produced, won a BAFTA and became essential viewing for the nation. More recently she took her MFA and her art has been exhibited internationally. She was born in Liverpool and has lived in Ireland, New Zealand and Australia.
