Cynthia Lennon (née Powell; 10 September 1939 – 1 April 2015) was a British artist and author, and the first wife of John Lennon. She was born in Blackpool on 10 September 1939 and raised in Hoylake on the Wirral Peninsula. She was 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 age 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.
She attended the Liverpool College of Art, where Lennon was also a student, and started a relationship with him 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 with their son Julian, the couple married in August 1962, and they 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 Powell for Japanese artist Yoko Ono; the couple’s divorce was 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, Powell held several auctions of memorabilia associated with her life with Lennon. In her later years, Powell lived in Palma Nova, Mallorca, where she died in 2015.
There are several posts on the timeline showing John Lennon’s connection to Blackpool: John Lennon’s Father’s Home in Blackpool, John Lennon’s Three Fleetwood Summers, The Beatles Perform at the ABC Theatre and James Hanratty, John Lennon and Stevonia Fish & Chips.
Paul McCartney, of The Beatles, with his actress girlfriend Jane Asher, and John Lennon, also of The Beatles, with his wife Cynthia at tonight’s ‘Grapefruit’ party held in the Mayfair Suite of the Hanover Grand, London. The ‘Grapefruit’ are a new beat group, who were celebrating the release of their first RCA single ‘Dear Delilah’.
Images by © Alamy
