The final word on music's greatest legend, in which Philip Norman reveals a John Lennon the world has never seen. With ground-breaking insight into the pain, beauty and frustration that shaped the genius of modern music, John Lennon: The Life redefines a legend.

John Lennon - the iconic songwriter, composer and one quarter of The Beatles - was a giant of the twentieth century. As the founding member of the world's most successful group ever, he changed lives.

Now, the bestselling author of Shout!, recognised for over 25 years as the ultimate Beatles biography, turns his formidable talent to the Beatle for whom belonging to the world's most beloved pop group was never enough.

Drawing on previously untapped sources, and with unprecedented access to all the major characters, Philip Norman presents the most complete and revealing portrait of John Lennon ever written. The book's hundreds of key informants and interviewees include Sir Paul McCartney, Sir George Martin, Neil Aspinall, Sean Lennon, whose moving reminiscence reveals his father as never before, and Yoko Ono, who speaks with sometimes shocking candour about the inner workings of her marriage to John.

This masterpiece of biography takes a fresh look at every aspect of Lennon's much-chronicled life as Norman shows us the whole man from Lennon's schooldays to his death outside his New York apartment building on December 8, 1980.

Honest and unflinching and featuring previously unseen photographs this truly is the definitive John Lennon.