The Paul McCartney Encyclopedia
Bill Harry was the first person to write about Paul McCartney on a regular basis. He first met Paul in 1958 and began to chronicle the Beatles rise from local to international fame in his publication Mersey Beat from 1961. Paul wrote regularly to him and the encyclopaedia reproduces extracts from Paul's letters about his experience backing a stripper, travelling to France with John Lennon and his first trip to Hamburg. In 500,000 words and almost 2,000 separate entries, the Paul McCartney Encyclopedia is the result of interviews and research conducted over a forty-year period. Harry is the world's leading authority on the Beatles. He attended the Liverpool College of Arts with John Lennon and is the author or a number of books on the Beatles, including the sister volumes, the Beatles Encyclopedia and the Lennon Encyclopedia both published by Virgin Books.