Tom Williams

All You Need Is an Island

Beatlebone

By

Canongate 263pp £12.99 order from our bookshop

In 1967, an island off the west coast of Ireland was put up for sale in a newspaper advertisement. John Lennon sent The Beatles’ trusted assistant, Alistair Taylor, to the auction on his behalf. Taylor secured Dorinish for Lennon for the sum of £1,550. The island offered some of the best pasture in Clew Bay and local sheep farmers had been interested in the opportunities it offered. Lennon dreamed of building a house there.

Kevin Barry’s Beatlebone is a reconstruction of Lennon’s return to the island,

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'Darley’s book is not a mad dash through this most compelling and complex of English counties. Nor is it another ti… ,
    • 'Moser’s book offers such a gripping account of a profoundly damaged human being, trapped in a cycle of repetition,… ,
    • 'Ideas that I’d thought were set down in full continue to smoulder ... this book is only a snapshot of some larger… ,
    • 'Full of invention which, at its most pedestrian, is eminently Victorian, and at its most unrestrained wildly imagi… ,
    • 'What in other hands could have been a dry, pedantic account of Christianity’s birth and evolution becomes in Holla… ,
    • RT : One of my favourite literary magazines is celebrating 40 years this year. Here is the September edition of… ,
    • 'Now that the Thames is too fast-flowing to freeze, its spirit’s devotees ... have found other climes for their pri… ,
    Follow Us