“Anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic. But because it is sugarcoated, it is accepted”: The song John Lennon called “the best I've ever written” – and Yoko Ono’s uncredited contribution

John and Yoko.

One morning in early 1971, John Lennon sat down at a Steinway upright piano in the bedroom of his Grade-II listed Georgian house at Tittenhurst Park, a 72-acre estate near Ascot in Berkshire, and wrote a song regarded by many as the ultimate peace anthem, an ode to idealism and a meditation on collective hope.

The song was Imagine and, for many, it is viewed as the defining composition of Lennon’s post-Beatles career and one of the greatest songs of the 20th century.