Lesley-Ann Jones - 'Who Killed John Lennon?: The Lives, Loves and Deaths of the Greatest Rock Star'

Another soon-to-be bestselling title by journalist Lesley-Ann Jones is due for general release on 17th September 2020. Anybody who regularly visits my blog, or who takes a look through LAJ's social media will know how much of a fan I am of her work, and this is the best yet.

Lennon is one of my heroes, and I have (naturally) read just about every biography of him which has ever been written - so when I heard that my favourite author was releasing a biography of the greatest rock star, I was abuzz with excitement. And then to be offered a review copy of the book for my continued support of LAJ's work was such an honour, and I was very excited to have received the book over a week before it was available in stores.

The book explores the life of John Winston Ono Lennon, just as every biography of him does, but Lesley-Ann Jones does it differently. Instead of trudging through ever major and some minor events of Lennon's life, she goes through his life as if she is visiting it, writing of how each part of it made her feel and how she believes it must have made John feel - and, where possible, she includes snippets of interviews with relevant people; from John's childhood friend Pete Shotton to the famed Sir Paul McCartney. She goes at it from a different angle, from under a lens at the safety of her desk to standing in John's childhood bedroom at Mendips, Menlove Avenue, Liverpool.

She answers every question that you have ever had about Lennon, and then some. It amazes - no, astounds - me how she has managed to seemingly illustrate everything and take a trip down Penny Lane and beyond. The beautiful thing about the way LAJ writes is that she brings the reader into the tale of the subject's life, and this book is no different - and yet, it is. You don't feel as if you are beside John Lennon as he loses his mother (1958), plays Shea Stadium (1965), meets Yoko Ono (1966) and many more, but rather you feel like you're standing beside Lesley-Ann Jones as she explores his life and wonders about how it made him feel. She brings John into the limelight as has never been done before, yet focuses on his personal life rather than his life with music, and definitley does not focus on The Beatles as most do; this alone makes her book stand out from others, because a lot of biographers of Lennon's life are interested largely on the ten years which he was in The Beatles, and then very little on his life after it, or his relationship with music post-1969. This book stands alone from the others, and it stands out. It is incredible. LAJ litters little pieces of herself throughout her books, making them seem so personal that you could almost imagine that she and yourself are the only two owners of the book in the world.

Jones writes on pg 28, "the self-loving, self-loathing, self-discovering John, who belonged to the planet but who existed mostly within his own mind, is among us." And in this book, he is, and it has never been more evident than reading this piece of art which Jones has so thoughtfully penned to tell the tale of the world's greatest rockstar.

I recommend this book to anybody and everybody who would ever want to learn about Lennon in an individual way. This book is nothing like any other biography written about Lennon before, and is a masterpiece, perhaps the defining work of LAJ's career as an author, to date. I am so privileged to have been given a pre-publication copy of it - thank you, Lesley-Ann Jones, for doing what others have not been able to, and writing such an amazing biography of the world's greatest rockstar.