Ray Connolly

What was it like to be Elvis Presley? What did it feel like when impossible fame made him its prisoner? As the world's first rock star, there was no one to tell him what to expect, no one with whom he could share the burden of being himself – of being Elvis. On the outside, he was all charm and...

John Lennon was a rock star, a school clown, a writer, a wit, an iconoclast, a sometime peace activist and finally an eccentric millionaire. He was also a Beatle—his plain-speaking and impudent rejection of authority catching, and eloquently articulating, the group's moment in history. Chronicling a famously troubled life, Being John Lennon analyses the contradictions in the singer-songwriter's creative and...