The archive of Stuart Sutcliffe, the original bassist with the Beatles, is up for sale, featuring more than 400 paintings and drawings – plus astonishing Beatles ephemera including an unfinished novel about John Lennon.
Sutcliffe was a galvanising force in the Beatles, who met John Lennon when the pair were art students in Liverpool – after joining Paul McCartney and George Harrison in skiffle group the Quarrymen, it was Sutcliffe and Lennon who spliced a reference to Beat poets with a nod to Buddy Holly’s band the Crickets, thus creating the Beatles’ band name.
