Rare and Unseen Photographs from the Beatles Book Archive

Buy Looking Through You here

This amazing photo archive of The Beatles in their heyday was born when publisher Sean O’Mahony realised that the group was going to be much more than just another pop act. In 1963 he launched a monthly magazine, The Beatles Book, and negotiated ongoing access to the Fab Four that others could only envy. 

Magazine fans worldwide would devour the contents of each issue, absorbing all the latest Beatles news and poring over the exclusive monochrome photographs taken by their in-house photographer, Leslie Bryce. Only a fraction of Bryce’s photographs were used in the magazine during its original six-year, 77-issue life, and often these had been cropped or retouched to enhance the band’s perceived image at the time. As a result many pictures remained unseen in their original form. Others had never been seen before at all. 

This collection of over 300 of the archive’s most extraordinary photographs comes from Leslie Bryce’s original negatives and reflects the frantic schedule of John, Paul, George and Ringo as their fame rose to unimaginable heights and they became international icons. From British provincial theatre gigs and concert tours through TV appearances and foreign tours – including the ground-breaking first American visit – to their eventual withdrawal to the recording studio, these images record and reflect a career that astonished everyone with its scale, its success and its far-reaching influence.

It was all half a century ago but these pictures capture the spirit of the times in a way that still looks fresh. They also reflect the progress of four individuals dealing with levels of global fame that must have seemed to them simultaneously liberating and intrusive, enjoyable and disquieting. Without doubt the archive forms one of the most important collections of Beatles images ever assembled and, for the first time ever, this book makes it widely available.