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'Lennon was violent'
12/09/2005 13:17 - (SA)
London - John Lennon's first wife says the late Beatle had a violent temper and once hit her in a fit of jealousy, according to excerpts from a new book published in a British newspaper on Sunday.
Cynthia Lennon met John in the late 1950s in the English city of Liverpool, where they were both art students. The two married in 1962 and had a son, Julian, before divorcing in 1968.
Cynthia writes in her new book, John, that her ex-husband was prone to violent tantrums, according to an excerpt published in The Sunday Times, which is serialising the book. "I could put up with his outbursts, the jealousy and possessiveness but not the violence," she writes.
In the excerpt published on Sunday, Cynthia describes the only occasion when John struck her. She wrote that while they were at art college, John had become jealous after seeing her dance with his close friend Stuart Sutcliffe, one of the Beatles' early members.
"The next day at college he followed me to the girls' loos (toilets) in the basement. When I came out he was waiting with a dark look on his face. Before I could speak he raised his arm and hit me across the face, knocking my head into the pipes that ran down the wall behind me," Cynthia wrote.
'Although he was still verbally cutting and unkind...'
She added that John took three months to apologise for hitting her and ask her to go out with him again. "Although he was still verbally cutting and unkind, he was never again physically violent to me."
Cynthia also said that John shied away from others' aggression, once fleeing in tears after an argument broke out between his aunt Mimi and Cynthia's mother.
In her book, Cynthia links John's violent behaviour to his troubled upbringing. His aunt Mimi raised him after he was removed from the care of his mother in 1944. "He was taken away from his mother and brought up in a cold, austere home with little affection or comfort," Cynthia writes.
In the book's foreword, their son Julian writes: "Dad was a great talent, a remarkable man who stood for peace and love in the world. But at the same time he found it very hard to show any peace and love to his first family, my mother and me."
Cynthia attributes the breakdown of their marriage to John's drug use, rather than his marital infidelities. Her book is published by The Crown Publishing Group and goes on sale in Britain on September 27.
- AP
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South Africa
