John by Cynthia Lennon

Cynthia Lennon (née Powell) (born 10 September 1939) is the former wife of musician John Lennon. She grew up in the middle-class section of Hoylake, on the Wirral Peninsula, and at 12 years old was accepted into the Junior Art School, and later was enrolled in the Liverpool College of Art. Lennon also attended the college, meeting Powell in a calligraphy class, which led to a relationship.

When Lennon was performing in Hamburg with The Beatles, she rented Lennon's bedroom from his aunt and legal guardian, Mimi Smith. After she became pregnant with Julian Lennon, the Lennons were married on 23 August 1962, at the Mount Pleasant Register office in Liverpool. In 1968, Lennon left her for Yoko Ono, and planned to sue for divorce and sole custody of their son. During this time Paul McCartney visited her, composing "Hey Jude" on the way. The Lennons' divorce was legally granted on 8 November 1968.

She married Italian hotelier Roberto Bassanini in 1970, divorcing him in 1973. In 1976, she married John Twist, an engineer from Lancashire, but divorced him in 1983. After her divorce, she changed her name back to Lennon by deed poll and met Jim Christie, who was her partner for 17 years. She published A Twist of Lennon in 1978, and later married Noel Charles, a night club owner, in 2002. In September 2005, she published a new biography, John. In 2006, she and her son attended the Las Vegas premiere of the Cirque du Soleil production of the Beatles Love, which marked her only joint public appearance with Ono. She currently lives in Majorca, Spain.