‘Love Me Do’ offers a fresh and distinctive look at how we live our lives. Lydia Macpherson’s poems are closely observed, tender, witty and often intensely personal, with subjects ranging from knitting to the far reaches of space, via a Voodoo Barbie and a skeleton under the bed.

1963. The year the Beatles first top the charts. The year Martin Luther King has a dream. The year Truman Bird moves his family from their home in Brighton to a dilapidated caravan in the Ashdown Forest - then disappears. Truman's a charmer, a chancer, a liar. He's always got away with it, too. But now he's gone a dangerous step too far and only has one day to put things right - before he loses everything. For Truman's wife, Christie, life has not turned out the way she'd imagined. How has she, that young girl of not that many years ago, ended up like this? In a caravan. With three children. And an absent husband. Honest and unsettling, yet ultimately uplifting, this unique, wise and addictive British debut weaves themes of love, betrayal, family and childhood, and shows that even though life has a habit of getting in the way of dreams, people find their own extraordinary ways of bouncing back.

Love Me Do tells the story of the Beatles by highlighting and then examining in detail fifty significant events in their amazing career. Taking a completely new approach to the band, Paolo Hewitt creates one of the great Beatle biographies in time for the 50th anniversary of the release of the band's first single. Using huge amounts of research and personal insight, Paolo Hewitt will take the reader on a rollercoaster ride, from little-known moments such as the Beatles' audition to be Billy Fury's backing band, the band's early recording of 'That'll be the Day' and George Harrison being deported from Hamburg, to more famous moments, such as the band's stint at The Cavern, their 1969 rooftop gig and the making of the Sgt Pepper album. Beginning with the formation of the Beatles in the late 1950s and concluding with the band's reformation in 1996 - when Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr recorded and released two of John Lennon's songs - this book traces how the Beatles influenced their generation and countless others since.

A behind-the-scenes look at the Beatles' first British tour in 1963, as well as their historic live appearance at the Royal Variety Performace at the London Palladium.