Leslie is obviously an admirer of both men - you can feel the warm glow from the pages - but even reading this splendid ode to the Lennon-McCartney partnership couldn’t rid me of my impression that John was a deeply unpleasant man. He was an interesting unpleasant man, admittedly, especially as so many of his faults would become characteristic of the age that followed. He was cool, self-obsessed, masked his rudeness and aggression with the virtue of authenticity, and he was cynical towards beliefs and institutions he didn’t like while credulous about ideas that suited him. The faults of our age, an age which the Beatles helped to create in ways we perhaps don’t appreciate.