News

Exclusive: Documentary marks the 50th anniversary of the seminal album.

A new Beatles film marking the 50th anniversary of the iconic band’s seminal album ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ is in post-production.

It Was Fifty Years Ago Today…Sgt Pepper And Beyond, directed by Alan G. Parker (Hello Quo), will be sold internationally by former Im Global executive Tim Grohne’s Primal Screen.

The film picks up on The Beatles as they end their gruelling tour schedule in August 1966 (coincidentally following on from Ron Howard’s recent Beatles documentary Eight Days A Week) to return to the studio to record the landmark ‘Sgt. Pepper’ album.

As one of the biggest selling records of all time, described by Rolling Stone magazine simply as “The most important rock & roll album ever made…”, ‘Sgt Pepper’ (released in June 1967) marked a pivotal moment in the 60’s, cementing the advent of Psychedelia and the Summer of Love.

The album includes...

London, Aug 31: Hundreds of letters and cards sent by John Lennon to his family and friends are set to be published for the first time.

Author Hunter Davies, who wrote the only official biography of The Beatles in the 1960s, is trying to track down every communique written by the late singer.

"I've found a lot of letters that nobody's ever seen," the BBC quoted him as saying.

Davies also revealed that it was the first time Lennon's widow Yoko Ono had given permission for his private letters to be published, while some of the communication has been tracked down through auction houses selling Lennon memorabilia.

With love from me to you...

Perhaps the greatest song writer in history, John Lennon is set to have another set of his words published: his personal letters.

The Beatle legend's personal letters, prolific in words and numbers, are owned by his widow, Yoko Ono. With convincing from Beatles' official biographer, Hunter Davies, Ono agreed to sell the rights to publish them, the Guardian reports. The book will be released in October, 2012, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' first hit song, 'Love Me Do.'

Lennon was a talented writer beyond music. In his lifetime, he published two books of fiction and comedy short stories, 'Lennon In His Own Write' and 'A Spaniard in the Works.' He also contributed to Merseybeat newspaper, the local alternative magazine in his hometown of Liverpool that helped initially promote the band, with stories under pseudonyms.

In his 'About The Awful'...

Director who captured swinging London's zeitgeist and remade classics for television

For a few years in the 1960s, Clive Donner, who has died aged 84 after suffering from Alzheimer's disease, was among the leading film directors of swinging London. Unfortunately, when London stopped swinging, so did Donner. The four films that made his name were a low-budget adaptation of Harold Pinter's play The Caretaker (1963); Nothing But the Best (1964), a wicked satire on the British class structure; the farcical What's New Pussycat? (1965); and the coming-of-age comedy Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1968).

Already in his 30s when he started directing, Donner gained a reputation for being tuned in to "youth". His debut movie, The Secret Place (1957), a heist drama shot on location in the East End, had David McCallum as a Brandoesque leather-jacketed "crazy mixed-up kid".

The Heart of a Child (1958) concerned a boy and his St Bernard dog, Rudi,...

In today's podcast, in the week when Roman Polanksi's new film of Robert Harris's novel, The Ghost, is released, Claire Armitstead discusses the film with to the Guardian's critic, Peter Bradshaw.

She also talks to the journalist Simon Hattenstone, who ghost-wrote Ronnie O'Sullivan's autobiography and the autobiography of Dwayne Brooks (the boy who was attacked with Stephen Lawrence on the night Lawrence was murdered), about the art of the ghost-writer. And John Crace digests the relationship between Wayne Rooney and his ghost-writer, Hunter Davies.

Reading list

Ronnie: The Autobiography of Ronnie O'Sullivan

Steve and Me: My Friendship with Stephen Lawrence and the Search for Justice by Duwayne Brooks

Wayne Rooney: My Story by Wayne Rooney and Hunter Davies

Claire ArmitsteadPeter BradshawSimon HattenstoneScott CawleyJohn Crace...

The Beatles' only official biographer has denied the implication from Max Clifford that he had a key role in success of the band. Hunter Davies wrote to The Guardian following an interview with the publicist. He claimed that Clifford's work at Emi would have amounted to shifting handouts about all acts on the label from 1962 and 1963. Davies said: "I have about 500 Beatles books, plus about 2,000 magazines, programmes and articles about The Beatles, yet I have not read one reference in them to Mr Clifford's contribution. "During the '60s, I was with The Beatles for 18 months, working on their authorised biography, and (more)...

Sir Sean Connery has ditched plans for his long-awaited autobiography, returning a staggering $1.7 million advance to the publishing giants Harper Collins. The veteran James Bond star already abandoned plans to work with original writer and childhood pal Meg Henderson, and later pulled away from second choice Hunter Davies, and has now decided to forget about the entire project. A source says, "Sir Sean doesn't need the money, everyone knows that. The book was always about setting the record straight. But looking back on your life when you are aged 74 is a very emotionally demanding thing to do."...

Acting legend Sir Sean Connery has ditched plans for an autobiography for the second time. The book launch was planned to coincide with the 50th anniversary of his glittering film career in 2007 - and was to be written by ghost-writer Hunter Davies, who 74-year-old Connery signed a contract with last summer. The Scottish screen star only backed out of a contract with another writer, fellow Scot Meg Henderson, six months earlier. Henderson says, "He isn't the man I thought he was, nor the man he likes to think he is." It is rumored within the publishing world the Oscar-winning actor feared his public image would suffer because Davies wanted to write a no-holds-barred book about the actor, who has enjoyed a wild sex life and has also endured claims of wife-beating, which he has always denied.