#julia lennon

Julia herself studied linguistics and philosophy of education in university, and worked as a special needs teacher in disadvantaged areas for many years. Her life experience seems to have given her a sense of sympathy for the socially excluded, and her work experience lends itself to good writing and emotional insight. This is one of the few Beatles memoirs that isn't ghostwritten.

Julia's main aim in writing her memoir was to redeem the good name of her mother. Since Hunter Davies' Beatles biography in 1968, the basic story of how John ended up with Mimi hadn't varied much. Sometimes it was kinder ("Julia just wasn't able to look after him") and sometimes meaner ("Julia didn't really care and was too busy having affairs/being a party animal") but the essence was the same - Mimi did John a good turn by taking him in. This narrative survives to the present and is broadly how the story is presented in Tune In. Julia B is not having it, and wants to make it clear that, from her perspective, Mimi essentially stole John from his mother through of combination of browbeating and manipulation, and Julia was completely blameless.

Julia is reasonably restrained in her writing for the most part, which is commendable because if half of what she is saying is true she could be forgiven for condemning her mother's family in the strongest language. The book was a major source for Francis Kenny's book about John (reviewed here) and while there is the same "Julia senior = good, Mimi = bad" dichotomy, her assessments are generally a bit more emotionally intelligent than his. She does try to be fair to Mimi but you can tell it's a struggle for her. It seems Julia B and her sister had difficult relationships with all their aunts, but at the same time they were surprisingly close to them. You get the sense of a conflicted but enmeshed family.

The recurring theme with Julia and Jackie is the unmarried status of their parents and the deep shame this triggered in the other Stanley sisters. Even though Julia and Jackie ended up living with another aunt and remained close to their cousins, they were still told by their aunt Nanny "You're not really part of this family" for decades. It's desperately cruel and sad, and very believable. The Stanleys strike me as a family only barely in the middle class, and extremely insecure about their position, leading to puritanism and secretiveness that mightn't have occurred if they were just a couple of rungs up or down on the class ladder. I've observed this dynamic myself IRL, down to the compulsive secretiveness about people who "spoil" the middle-class image.

Julia B seems to have got many of her stories about the family from her aunt Nanny, who became talkative in her old age. She recounts the Julia senior-Alf-John Blackpool incident (which may not have happened quite as described), and the Stanley patriarch's disapproval both of Julia marrying Alf in the first place and then taking up with Bobby Dykins. Mimi also is recorded as being scandalised at Julia and Bobby's relationship, and that as being her main motivation in getting John out of the small flat the three briefly shared. Julia B says, presumably via Nanny, that Julia senior and Bobby moved back into the Stanley home and tried to get John back but Mimi refused, an incident apparently witnessed by John's cousin Liela. Julia B portrays her mother as weakened by post-natal depression (after giving another baby up for adoption) and unable to fight back. She says that Mimi referred to Julia and Bobby's eventual home as the "House of Sin" and her own home as the "House of Correction."

According to Julia B, John was a regular visitor in their home from about the age of eleven, and was close to his mother and half-sisters. She portrays it as John escaping the miserable atmosphere of Mendips and getting some freedom, and also that John had to keep his visits secret or Mimi would hit the roof. Eventually Mimi and Julia senior seem to have come to some arrangement because the visits were no longer covert, and Julia senior would also visit Mendips.

I think Julia B is generally fairly trustworthy, but I think some parts of her story are talked up and/or seen through rose-coloured glasses. There's some accounts of Bobby being violent to Julia senior (including, indirectly, from John) but Julia simply says that her parents' marriage was "passionate" and that they sometimes had "rows". Sounds a lot like a child in denial. I believe that she had a mostly happy life at home with her folks, but there was probably more conflict than she's letting on. She strongly idealises both her parents, especially her mother. I imagine the trauma of her childhood led to her employing psychological splitting, so all negative feelings could be projected onto Mimi and the aunts (who certainly gave cause for it tbf), keeping the parents blameless.

From reading about her in various sources, I get the sense that Julia senior was a complicated figure who could have been both a victim of her family's bullying and also poor with boundaries and inconsistent in the attention she showed her children. Her sometimes irresponsible behaviour was not enough to have her child taken away from her imo, but it does speak to a certain inability to see consequences that may have been, in part, a symptom of untreated mental illness. The relationships of all five Stanley sisters to their domineering father seems to be key to understanding them, and I wish the book could have said more about that. But to Julia B's credit, she usually doesn't talk at length about things she doesn't know about or didn't witness.

Julia senior's death is naturally the biggest calamity of the book. Allowing for possible exaggeration and distorted memories, the way that Julia and Jackie were treated afterwards is one of the worst things I've ever read - as bad as what happened to John imo. [CW for emotional cruelty to children]

They were packed off to an aunt in Scotland and told their mother was in hospital and not to ask any questions. After several weeks they were sent back to Liverpool to live with another aunt, again forbidden from mentioning their mother, and with no sign of their father. Eventually, Julia says, their aunt's husband insisted on telling them that their mother was dead, over the objections of his wife. Meanwhile, as they discovered later, the Stanley sisters had applied to make Julia and Jackie wards of court, arguing that Bobby Dykins was an unfit father. Dykins doesn't seem to have challenged the ruling. Julia frames this as her father being too browbeaten by the Stanleys to fight back but that might be letting him off the hook a bit. Regardless of what happened, the outcome was two little girls, already treated as second-class citizens within their family, suddenly having both their parents disappear without explanation, and having to live with relatives who seemed to resent them. I just can't get over the cruelty. Even by the standards of the time, that was extreme middle-class circumspection.

Eventually Dykins was allowed back into their lives, and they did live with him again briefly. Meanwhile John was forging ahead with the Beatles, but still part of their lives, even if they saw him less often. Yet when John became famous he never made any public reference to having sisters, and they were only talked about tangentially in the Hunter Davies biography. This is speculation on my part, but I could see him being influenced by Mimi's assertion that they were not "really" part of the family, and vaguely embarrassing and shameful. It's not that he would consciously think such things, but the power of shame and secrecy is pre-verbal. He also may have known that acknowledging them would upset Mimi, which is borne out by how angry she got when John started tentatively rebuilding a relationship with his father.

Julia B acknowledges that once John moved to London they didn't have a close relationship any more - although she does recall a visit by her and Jackie to Kenwood which they both enjoyed. When Dykins died a few years later (Julia was in university by then) John wasn't told for months, because again, not "part of the family".

They weren't in touch much over the next few years and Julia recalls a humiliating incident where she tried to visit John in the Apple offices around 1969 but was dismissed by the receptionist and sent packing. That put her off reaching out until eventually she started exchanging phone calls and letters with him in the mid-70s. She rather mysteriously says she destroyed her letters from John when she was moving house, and claims (implausibly) that it never occurred to her that they could have long-term value. I'm not sure what to believe there. I wondered if maybe John wrote unflattering things about their mother in his letters. But obviously I can't know for sure.

You can tell Julia doesn't like Yoko, but she's reasonably restrained about her. Their biggest conflict arose over a house John had said in a letter to Liela was intended for Julia and Jackie, but which Yoko wanted to sell after its occupant died. During their arguments Yoko said "You hardly knew John" which must have hurt Julia a lot, but also I can see Yoko getting this version of events from Mimi and the other aunts and being confused as to why Julia is insisting she did have a relationship with John. Yoko offered money but Julia says she didn't want money, it was the symbolism of the house itself. In the end Yoko donated it to the Salvation Army. That interaction and another one indicates that Yoko may have been getting a certain version of Stanley family lore - in this second anecdote, John sent Julia and Jackie some money, asking them not to tell Mimi, but then for some reason Yoko rang up Mimi to tell her! Paints the tantalising picture of Yoko and Mimi as frenemies in cahoots against the (to their perspective) family hustlers and wrong 'uns.

While I don't think Julia is dishonest, I think she is likely talking up her and Jackie's closeness with John in their younger years. I don't doubt that he was a frequent visitor and they had a good relationship, but some of the stories about their interactions sounded a little exaggerated and unlikely. I think it's likely that after their mother died they didn't see much of each other, but still remembered each other of course. There's also a few general anecdotes that have the feel of constructed memories - again, not lying, but the common memoir problem of the brain creating memories based on what the person heard later rather than on what they actually experienced. But I think the memoir has a lot of emotional truth. It's a necessary corrective to the traditional Mimi-Julia-John story, which even in its most benign form leaves a lot of obvious questions unanswered. Even in the best faith reading Mimi seems to have been a very problematic individual who, intentionally or otherwise, caused a lot of pain for others. At the same time Julia senior was unlikely to have been the magical angel she is portrayed as here. The biographical account of this interesting woman, one that doesn't (a) sexualise (b) denigrate or (c) romanticise her has yet to be written.

I think Imagine This is worth reading; not everything in it should be taken as gospel but it's interesting as the memoir of a (very dysfunctional) family. Sometimes the writing can be a bit flowery and sentimental, but it's mostly OK. It's certainly an important addition to the narrative of John's life.

julia is such a fun spirit in this, i really like how bright and fun they made her and in their first meetings, you can tell it was awkward but that john had missed her but also erm the weird incestuous undertones r weirding me out rn i dont like this much (edit: oh nvm i found out about the whole atj and sj stuff so erm)

also the fact that red is the connection made with her in her bright red lipstick, red nails, and her coat, red is a very strong and noticeable color which always catches the eyes

aaron taylor-johnson...... im drooling he looks nothing like john but oh my days hes so dreamy help me...........im actually slobbering like a dog why did they make my scrawny rash and gangly teen john so fine

LITERALLY NONE OF THEM LOOK LIKE THEIR REAL COUNTERPARTS IM DEAD im still drooling over atj hes so fine oh my god

a bunch of gaybos these guys are dear god cant believe they put the john lennon staring at paul mccartney look in here AND HE WINKED AT HIM DEAR GOD

how john breaks down is so raw oh my god..... his voice goes a little higher and its like hes that little boy all over again

also the fact that paul was the only one being able to reign him and bring him back from his vision clouded with rage...... sigh i know what you are