One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time: Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize
By Craig Brown

WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2020A Spectator Book of the Year • A Times Book of the Year • A Telegraph Book of the Year • A Sunday Times Book of the YearFrom the award-winning author ofand Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaretand comes a fascinating, hilarious, kaleidoscopic biography of the Fab Four.John Updike compared them to the sun coming out on an Easter morning'. Bob Dylan introduced them to drugs. The Duchess of Windsor adored them. Noel Coward despised them. JRR Tolkien snubbed them. The Rolling Stones copied them. Loenard Bernstein admired them. Muhammad Ali called them little sissies'. Successive Prime Ministers sucked up to them. No one has remained unaffected by the music of The Beatles. As Queen Elizabeth II observed on her golden wedding anniversary, Think what we would have missed if we had never heard The Beatles.'One Two Three Fourand traces the chance fusion of the four key elements that made up The Beatles: fire (John), water (Paul), air (George) and earth (Ringo). It also tells the bizarre and often unfortunate tales of the disparate and colourful people within their orbit, among them Fred Lennon, Yoko Ono, the Maharishi, Aunt Mimi, Helen Shapiro, the con artist Magic Alex, Phil Spector, their psychedelic dentist John Riley and their failed nemesis, Det Sgt Norman Pilcher.From the bestselling author ofand Ma'am Darlingand comes a kaleidoscopic mixture of history, etymology, diaries, autobiography, fan letters, essays, parallel lives, party lists, charts, interviews, announcements and stories.and One Two Three Fourand joyfully echoes the frenetic hurly-burly of an era.