Philip Norman is one of our greatest biographers and Paul McCartney is one of the greatest of modern subjects: co-founder of the world's most celebrated band and composer of unforgettable songs. This is the story of a man who was public property by the age of 21, the trajectory of the Beatles from beginning to break-up, and of Swinging London in the 1960s. Philip Norman's masterly biography reveals the complex character beneath the cheeky-chappie facade, and sheds new light on his childhood, blighted by the death of his mother but redeemed by the extraordinary father who first turned him on to music.