Philip Norman - 'Paul McCartney: The Biography'

The 2013 biography of Sir Paul McCartney by acclaimed biographer and writer Philip Norman was one of the most pleasurable - albeit longest - books which I have ever read. Spanning from the very earliest days of McCartney's life to the very last events of 2013 (when the book was published), it was incredibly in depth, and seemed to examine his life and retell it from every angle possible. When reading this book, I felt as if I was truly in the company of one of my greatest heroes, McCartney, and that he was telling me his life story. The way that Norman writes is so special; it pulls you right into the life of his subject and takes you on a journey, taking you through what feels like everyday.

As a fan of both Paul's Beatles career and his solo works as well as his work with Wings, I was both pleased and surprised to find that the very minimum was said about The Beatles - some biographers have a tendency to focus on the years spent with John, George and Ringo as the Fab Four, but Norman almost glosses over it, which is not altogether a terrible thing because it gave me a chance to truly appreciate the life of McCartney away from The Beatles, and to appreciate him for what I always knew he was; an incredible musician, and what seems like an incredible person as well.

I would argue that the prologue is perhaps too long - longer even than most of the chapters in the book, but this did not put me off reading it. I felt that the majority of the chapters were just the right length, and this kept me from growing too annoyed with the book, though it did take me nearly six months to read... but this was not because it was a trying book to get through, but rather because I had a lot of other commitments with school and could not devote the time which I would have liked to to reading it.

There was no bias in this book, which was refreshing, though it seemed at the beginning that Philip Norman felt he had to justify why he had perhaps been so unfair to McCartney in the past, however this was not mentioned throughout the book and rather only present in the prologue.

Overall, I thought this was an excellent book, a completely unbiased and intriguing retelling of the extraordinary life of one of the world's most loved musicians, if not the most.