John Lennon by Alan Clayson (Sanctuary, £8.99)

FIRST the Lennon-as-god worship. Then the moptop who became a monster. And here, at long last, we have a balanced appraisal of the man's life.

The long-dead star would now - incredibly - be in his 63rd year. And I suspect the "what if" slice of fantasy in the end pages is recognition of this fact.

But as we all know, a psychopath called Mark Chapman would freeze the Scouse rocker in a time frame. Lennon as a pensioner. No, that could never have been...

What marks this out from all the other cut-and-paste jobs is the quality of the writing. I have become so bored with the "and after that, something else happened" school of Lennon literature.

Happily, this biography is the very antithesis of such lazy scribblings. No - here we have brisk, opinionated prose into which the reader can sink his or her teeth.

Much of this narrative is open-ended, but that is all to the good.

For example, did the fracas involving Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe eventually culminate in the latter's death? Possibly, but highly unlikely.

The bass player/artist's early demise was in all probability the result of an ambush by drunken thugs in a Liverpool alley.

And did Lennon have a homosexual dalliance with Brian Epstein? Maybe. But who cares, anyway?

This book strikes a balance between those who deify and the rest who vilify.

Yes, Lennon could be objectionable, cruel, a bully and hopelessly naive inadequate all at the same time. Yet this was only one side, albeit a grimy one, of the same proverbial coin.

Above all, Lennon was not, as many have claimed, a genius.

He was in fact a rather tortured individual who found his place in history during a momentous decade, a man who was in the right place at the right time.

Neither blinded by the light of hero worship, nor soured by cynicism, this sterling volume represents a major rethink on the life of a man who, whether we like it or not, touched all our lives.

John Phillpott