Cynthia Lennon

Cynthia Lennon (; 10 September 1939 – 1 April 2015) was the first wife of John Lennon and the mother of Julian Lennon. Born in Blackpool and raised in Hoylake on the Wirral Peninsula, she attended the Liverpool College of Art where Lennon was also a student. Powell and Lennon started a relationship after meeting in a calligraphy class. When Lennon was performing in Hamburg with the Beatles, Powell rented his bedroom at 251 Menlove Avenue in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton from his aunt and legal guardian, Mimi Smith. After Powell became pregnant, she and Lennon married in August 1962, and the couple lived at Kenwood in Weybridge from 1964 to 1968, where she kept house and participated with Lennon in a London-based social life. In 1968, Lennon left her for Japanese artist Yoko Ono; as a result, the couple's divorce was legally granted in November 1968 on the grounds of adultery. Powell had three further marriages. She published a book of memoirs, A Twist of Lennon, in 1978, and a more intimate biography, John, in 2005. Over the years, she held several auctions of memorabilia associated with her life with Lennon. In her later years she lived in Palma Nova, Mallorca, where she died in 2015. Early years Cynthia Powell was born in Blackpool on 10 September 1939, the youngest of three children of General Electric Company employee Charles Powell and his wife Lillian (née Roby), who already had two sons named Charles and Anthony. Her parents were from Liverpool, but her mother (along with other pregnant women) was sent to the safer area of Blackpool after World War II had been declared and lived in a small room in a bed-and-breakfast on the Blackpool seafront. After the birth, with Liverpool becoming a frequent target of German air raids, the Powell family moved to a two-bedroomed semi-detached house in Hoylake, a middle-class area on the Wirral Peninsula which was considered "posh" by those in Liverpool. At the age of 11, Powell won an art prize in a competition organised by the Liverpool Echo. A year later, she was accepted into Liverpool's Junior Art School, which was also attended by Bill Harry, later the editor of Liverpool's Mersey Beat newspaper.