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'They did not seem arrogant or entitled. I didn't see them bossing around their staff or being horrid to studio assistants. But they did worry if this was all there was. All this fame and fortune, was it really all that great? The world saw them as an overnight success, who had come from nowhere. But they knew from whence they had come. Perhaps that's what kept them grounded.' Hunter Davies, the only authorised biographer of The Beatles, revisits his treasured 39 notebooks filled with remarkable interviews to explore the lives of John, Paul, George and Ringo as they were growing up and coming of age. Drawing on a wealth of never-before-revealed, intimate material, and his own experience as a boy of similar age from a working-class Northern background, Hunter now tells the story of where they came from, what it was like, how it shaped their hopes and aspirations. Hunter spent three years with The Beatles, visiting all their homes, and each of them visiting his. He also spent time with their parents, school friends, teachers, girlfriends, members of the Quarry Men and many others from their inner circle. Their conversations often harked back to the War, with memories of air-raid shelters and rationing, to the NHS coming in, the eleven plus and grammar schools, and council house life in the 1950s. We all know what they became famous for, but here Hunter takes us into the much more private world of their formative years, for this colourful, richly detailed, personal portrait of the young boys who were destined to come together and revolutionise music and pop culture.

Hunter Davies OBE is the author of the only ever authorised biography of The Beatles, first published in 1968 and still in print in almost every country in the world. In 2012 he edited The Lennon Letters, published in 20 different foreign countries, and in 2014 The Beatles Lyrics. He is the author of more than 100 other books, including novels, biographies, travel and children's titles. As a journalist, he has written for Punch, the Guardian and the Sunday times, and continues to contribute to the New Statesman. He lives between a home in North London and a Dutch barge on the Isle of Wight.