Designer, restaurateur, author. Born Cynthia Lillian Powell in Blackpool, the daughter of Lillian Roby and Charles Powell, Liverpudlians who had fled the German bombing raids over Liverpool. Showing an artistic bent early, she attended Junior Art School before being accepted at Liverpool College of Art in 1957. She met fellow student, John Lennon, in lettering class, and the two became a couple. She was with him during the formation of The Beatles and visited Hamburg in 1961 when the band played there. When she discovered she was pregnant, she and Lennon married in August 1962, but in secret at the insistence of the Beatles' manager, just weeks before The Beatles' first hit, "Love Me Do," and the beginning of Beatlemania. Their son was born in Liverpool in April 1963 while Lennon was on tour. She accompanied her husband on the 1964 tour that took the Beatles in the US, but would never do so again. After she discovered him entertaining his then mistress at their home in 1968, upon her return from a trip to Greece, they were divorced. In 1970, she married Italian hotelier Roberto Bassanini, and they divorced in 1973. Her next venture was to open "Oliver's Bistro," a restaurant and B&B in Ruthin, Wales. In 1976 married John Twist, an engineer from Lancashire. In 1978, she published the memoir, "A Twist of Lennon," despite an attempt by Lennon to block it. She divorced Twist in 1983, reverting to the name Lennon, candidly admitting that it made her more bankable. In 1995, she recorded a cover of "Those Were the Days," but did not make the charts. In 2002, she married a nightclub owner, Noel Charles, and they established a home in Majorca, Spain. In 2005, she published a more intimate memoir entitled "John," in which she admitted, "I have come to realise that I will always be known as John's first wife." She succumbed to illness at the age of 75 after a short battle with cancer.