Cynthia Lennon

Cynthia Lennon

Cynthia Lillian Lennon (née Powell, born 10 September 1939) is the former wife of musician John Lennon, and mother of Julian Lennon. She grew up in the middle-class section of Hoylake, on the Wirral Peninsula in North West England. At the age of twelve, she was accepted into the Junior Art School, and was later enrolled in the Liverpool College of Art. Lennon also attended the college; a meeting with Powell in a calligraphy class led to their relationship.

When Lennon was performing in Hamburg with the Beatles, she rented Lennon's bedroom from his aunt and legal guardian, Mimi Smith. After Powell became pregnant, the Lennons were married on 23 August 1962, at the Mount Pleasant Register office in Liverpool. In 1964, the Lennons lived at Kenwood, in Weybridge, where she kept house and participated with her husband in a London-based social life. In 1968, Lennon left her for Yoko Ono; the couple's 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 from Twist, she changed her name back to Lennon by deed poll and met Jim Christie, her partner for 17 years. She published a book of memoirs, A Twist of Lennon, in 1978, and later married Noel Charles, a night club owner, in 2002. In September 2005, she published a more intimate biography, John. Over the years she staged several auctions of memorabilia associated with her life with Lennon. In 2006, she and her son attended the Las Vegas premiere of the Cirque du Soleil production of Love, which was her first public appearance with Ono. She currently lives in Majorca, Spain.