This quiet piece of Mallorca, it seems, is Cynthia’s retreat. Even by Mallorcan standards, it’s an environment that encourages you to drop back a gear or two and this, is how Cynthia likes it.
Tucked around the corner from a secluded cove, the house,although on a residential street, sits high above it on a series of leafy terraces, each its own little oasis of palms, plants and places to sit. It’s a sunny spring afternoon and on Cynthia’s shady terrace, allis calm.
Deep, brown, smiling eyes rimmed with kohl, the heavy blonde fringe that still suits her and a beautiful jade necklace that adds a touch of flower power to an elegant black outfit. “She would have been 80 this year, and I feel she must take her place in the Beatles story now,” said Howl.At home in Mallorca, as she greets me with a warm welcome and a soft Liverpuddlian lilt, Cynthia Lennon is instantly recognisable. There is a scene in which John is working on the song You’re Gonna Lose that Girl in their home and Cynthia joins him to sing it.”Ĭynthia kept painting and married three more times. “The first half of the play is snapshot moments from their lives together, with some original songs. “I was told lots of lovely stories, including how Cynthia went out to Hamburg to visit as a naive teenager,” said Howl. One, designer Helen Anderson, recalled making Lennon’s famous cap. “He said he was pleased someone was finally writing about how talented his mother was, since all the world has written about his father and no one has paid her any attention,” said Howl.Ĭynthia died in Spain in 2015, but Howl tracked down two of her closest friends from Liverpool days. While the playwright was researching This Girl, he put out an appeal for people with first-hand memories of Cynthia to come forward. I was in the right place at the right time, so it has always bothered me that no one has looked at Cynthia’s influence before.”
“I was in the Cavern Club a lot as a teenager and saw them there. It was equal on both sides,” said Howl, 73. “The key point for me is that they both fell madly in love when she was 18 and he was 17. Her wittily illustrated 1978 book about her early life, A Twist of Lennon, was followed in 2005 by a more serious memoir, John. I was embarrassed – but that was John,” she said at the time, adding that her years with John in Liverpool were the best of her life.
“The man kept scratching his head, thinking it was a fly. One shows John tickling the bald head of a man reading a newspaper in front of him on a bus. Several of her cartoon-style drawings of the band’s early years are displayed at th Beatles Story museum in Liverpool’s Albert Dock following a London exhibition of her work in 1999. Photograph: Cynthia Lennon/The Beatles Story, Liverpool One of Cynthia Lennon’s cartoon-style drawings.
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