Imagine This

Until now, the true story of John Lennon’s childhood has never been told. John’s sister Julia has herself been on a personal journey that has made it possible only now to reveal the full extent of the pain and difficulties – as well as the happier times – living inside John Lennon’s family brought.

Julia reveals the various strong, self-willed and selfish women who surrounded John as he grew up. John was removed from his mother at the age of 5 to live with his Aunt Mimi, and here Julia shows for the first time the cruelty of this decision – to both mother and son, she sheds a new light on his upbringing with Mimi which is often at dramatic odds with the accepted tale. John’s frequent visits to his mother and sisters gave him the liveliness, freedom and love he sought and allowed him to develop his musical talents. The tragic death of their mother, knocked down outside Aunt Mimi’s house by a speeding car when John was 17, meant that life for him and his sisters would never be the same again.

Poignant, raw and beautifully written, IMAGINE THIS casts John Lennon’s life in a new light and reveals the source of his emotional fragility and musical genius. It is also one family’s extraordinary story of how it dealt with fame and tragedy beyond all imagining.

Author Biography

Julia Baird has an MA in Philosophy of Education and first worked as a teacher of French and English before going on to work as a special needs teacher for 15 years with excluded adolescents in the most deprived areas of Chester. She has three children and is now a director of Cavern City Tours. She has written one previous book, JOHN LENNON: MY BROTHER, now out of print.