Wednesday 16 June 1965 | Radio | NEMS Enterprises, Argyll Street, London, England
On the evening of Wednesday 16 June 1965, John Lennon sat down at the offices of NEMS Enterprises on Argyll Street in London's West End for two BBC radio interviews — both recorded on the same evening, both promoting his forthcoming second book, A Spaniard In The Works, due to be published on 24 June. The first was for the BBC Home Service programme The World Of Books, conducted by Wilfred De'Ath between 8pm and 8.30pm. The second was for the Home Service show Today, conducted by Tim Matthews.
Together, the two interviews constitute one of the most revealing evenings in John Lennon's public literary life — a window into the mind of a writer who was genuinely, instinctively gifted, and who was simultaneously entirely uninterested in the academic vocabulary used to describe that gift.
The World Of Books: Lennon and De'Ath on Onomatopoeia
The interview with Wilfred De'Ath for The World Of Books lasted fifteen minutes. Twelve of those minutes were broadcast on the 3 July 1965 edition of the programme, from 10.10pm to 10.40pm, alongside a reading by Lennon of his poem The Fat Budgie. The three minutes that were cut — the gap between the recorded interview and the broadcast version — are lost to history.
What survives is extraordinary. The exchange between De'Ath and Lennon on the subject of onomatopoeia is one of the most perfectly Lennon moments on record: a literary critic attempting to explain a technical term to a writer who has been deploying it instinctively throughout his work, and the writer responding with a combination of genuine curiosity, cheerful ignorance, and a joke that is also, accidentally, a piece of literary theory.
De'Ath: You know when I say a word like ‘buzz’, ‘buzz’ is an onomatopoeia because in the word is captured the noise of the bee… and you probably without realising it… your book is full of them.
Lennon: Is it? Well, I’m glad to know that. Lot of onomatopoeias. I just haven’t a clue what you’re talking about really. Automatic pier, sounds like to me. That’s probably why I change words, ‘cause I haven’t a clue what words mean half the time.
Lennon: That’s three words I’ve learnt today!
The joke — “automatic pier” as a mishearing of “onomatopoeia” — is vintage Lennon: a pun that works on multiple levels simultaneously. It is funny as a simple mishearing. It is funnier still as a deliberate performance of the kind of word-mangling that fills A Spaniard In The Works. And it is funniest of all as a piece of accidental self-description: Lennon really did change words because he didn’t know what they meant, and the results were genuinely literary in ways that no amount of formal education could have produced.
De'Ath’s observation that the book is “full of” onomatopoeia is accurate. Lennon’s writing in both In His Own Write and A Spaniard In The Works is saturated with sound-words, invented compounds, and phonetic spellings that capture the noise and rhythm of speech in ways that conventional spelling cannot. He was doing what James Joyce had done, what Edward Lear had done, what Lewis Carroll had done — and he was doing it without having read any of them with any particular attention, and without knowing the technical vocabulary for what he was producing.
A Spaniard In The Works: Lennon’s Second Book
A Spaniard In The Works was John Lennon’s second published book, following In His Own Write (1964). It was published by Jonathan Cape on 24 June 1965 — eight days after this interview was recorded — and dedicated, with characteristic Lennon obliqueness, to “Yoko” — though at this point in 1965, Yoko Ono was not yet part of Lennon’s life in any significant way. The dedication was, by most accounts, a coincidence of names rather than a prophecy.
The book takes its title from a pun: “a spanner in the works” — the English idiom for a disruptive element — becomes “a Spaniard in the works”, a foreigner in the machinery, an outsider causing chaos. It is a title that captures the book’s spirit precisely: Lennon as the disruptive presence in the literary establishment, the working-class Liverpudlian who had no business writing books and was writing them anyway, and writing them well.
The contents are a mixture of short stories, poems, and drawings in the same vein as In His Own Write: surreal, violent, punning, occasionally tender, and consistently funny. The prose style is a kind of controlled chaos — words misspelled, portmanteaued, or invented outright; syntax bent until it breaks and then reassembled into something that makes a different kind of sense. Pieces include A Spaniard In The Works (the title story), The Fat Budgie (read by Lennon in the broadcast), Snore Wife and Some Several Dwarfs, and The National Health Cow — the last of which featured in the second interview of the evening.
The book was a commercial success, reaching number two on the UK bestseller list. Critics were divided: some recognised the genuine literary quality of Lennon’s wordplay; others dismissed it as a celebrity vanity project. The passage of time has settled the argument firmly in Lennon’s favour.
In His Own Write: The First Book
To understand A Spaniard In The Works, it helps to understand what had come before. In His Own Write, published by Jonathan Cape in March 1964, had been an immediate sensation — a collection of poems, short stories, and drawings that demonstrated, to the considerable surprise of the literary establishment, that one of The Beatles was a genuinely original writer.
The book had been reviewed seriously in the Times Literary Supplement, praised by the poet Philip Larkin, and compared — not entirely fancifully — to Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. It sold 300,000 copies in its first printing. A literary luncheon was held in Lennon’s honour at the Foyle’s bookshop in London, at which Lennon was expected to speak and instead said, famously: “Thank you. You’ve got a lucky face.”
The success of In His Own Write created both the opportunity and the pressure for a second book. A Spaniard In The Works was the result — written, like its predecessor, in the margins of an extraordinarily busy professional life, in hotel rooms and dressing rooms and on tour buses, whenever Lennon had a spare moment and a pen.
The Second Interview: Today with Tim Matthews
Later on the same evening of 16 June 1965, Lennon gave a second BBC interview — this one to Tim Matthews for the Home Service programme Today. The interview included two verses of The National Health Cow, one of the pieces from A Spaniard In The Works, read by Lennon.
The National Health Cow is a poem about a cow provided by the National Health Service — a piece of surreal social satire that manages to be simultaneously absurd and pointed. It is Lennon at his most Lear-like: the nonsense is structured, the rhythm is precise, and underneath the comedy is a genuine observation about British institutional life.
The Today interview was first broadcast on 21 June 1965, from 7.15pm — three days before the book’s publication date, and twelve days before the World Of Books broadcast. The two interviews, recorded on the same evening but broadcast on different dates, formed part of a coordinated promotional campaign for A Spaniard In The Works — one of the more sophisticated literary publicity operations of the mid-1960s, and a measure of how seriously Jonathan Cape and the BBC took Lennon as a writer.
NEMS Enterprises, Argyll Street: The Setting
Both interviews were recorded at the offices of NEMS Enterprises on Argyll Street in London’s West End — the management company founded by Brian Epstein that handled The Beatles and a roster of other Liverpool acts. Argyll Street runs between Oxford Circus and Regent Street, in the heart of London’s entertainment district, and the NEMS offices there were the administrative centre of the Beatles’ professional life in the mid-1960s.
The choice of NEMS as the interview location is itself revealing. Lennon was not doing these interviews as a private individual visiting a BBC studio. He was doing them as a Beatle, in the offices of his management company, on an evening that was presumably already full of other professional commitments — including, earlier that same day, the post-sync session for Help! at Twickenham Film Studios. It was a Wednesday in June 1965, and John Lennon had already finished a film and was now recording two radio interviews. This was the pace of his life.
Lennon as Writer: The Literary Dimension of a Beatle
The interviews of 16 June 1965 are a reminder that John Lennon’s literary output — often overshadowed by his music — was a genuine and significant part of his creative identity. He had been writing since childhood: the school newspaper he produced at Quarry Bank High School, The Daily Howl, was a direct precursor to the style of In His Own Write and A Spaniard In The Works. The wordplay, the surrealism, the violence, the tenderness — all of it was present in embryonic form in the teenage Lennon’s school publications.
What the De'Ath interview captures, in the onomatopoeia exchange, is something essential about how Lennon’s literary gift worked. He was not a trained writer. He had not studied literature in any formal sense. He wrote by instinct, by ear, by the same musical intelligence that made him one of the greatest songwriters of the twentieth century. When De'Ath tells him his book is full of onomatopoeia, Lennon’s response — “I just haven’t a clue what you’re talking about really” — is not false modesty. It is a precise description of how he worked: by sound, by feel, by the rightness of a word in a particular place, without needing to know its technical classification.
That is, of course, exactly how the best writers work. The difference is that most of them learn the vocabulary eventually. Lennon never bothered, and the results were no worse for it.
The Fat Budgie: Lennon’s Reading
The broadcast of the World Of Books interview on 3 July 1965 included a reading by Lennon of The Fat Budgie — one of the poems from A Spaniard In The Works. The poem is a mock-heroic celebration of a budgerigar, written in the style of a Victorian nature poem and systematically undermined by Lennon’s characteristic bathos and wordplay. It is, by any measure, a very funny piece of writing — and Lennon’s reading of it, in his dry Liverpudlian deadpan, would have been funnier still.
The decision to include a reading alongside the interview was a standard format for The World Of Books, which regularly featured authors reading from their work. That Lennon was treated in exactly the same way as any other author on the programme — interviewed about his craft, asked to read from his book — is itself a measure of how seriously the BBC took his literary output in 1965.
Key Facts: 16 June 1965
- Date: Wednesday 16 June 1965
- Location: NEMS Enterprises, Argyll Street, London
- Interview 1: The World Of Books, BBC Home Service, with Wilfred De'Ath, 8pm–8.30pm
- Broadcast 1: 3 July 1965, 10.10–10.40pm (12 minutes of 15 broadcast)
- Reading included: The Fat Budgie
- Interview 2: Today, BBC Home Service, with Tim Matthews
- Broadcast 2: 21 June 1965, from 7.15pm
- Reading included: Two verses of The National Health Cow
- Book promoted: A Spaniard In The Works
- Publication date: 24 June 1965, Jonathan Cape
- Also on 16 June: Post-sync work for Help! at Twickenham Film Studios (earlier that day)
John Lennon: The Writer, The Wit, The Beatle
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NEMS Enterprises was located on Argyll Street in London’s West End, between Oxford Circus and Regent Street. The offices served as the administrative centre of The Beatles’ professional life throughout the mid-1960s.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is A Spaniard In The Works?
A Spaniard In The Works is John Lennon's second published book, a collection of poems, short stories, and drawings published by Jonathan Cape on 24 June 1965. It follows In His Own Write (1964) and features the same surreal, punning, phonetically inventive style. The title is a pun on the English idiom 'a spanner in the works'.
What did John Lennon say about onomatopoeia in the BBC interview?
When interviewer Wilfred De'Ath told Lennon that A Spaniard In The Works was full of onomatopoeia, Lennon replied: "I just haven't a clue what you're talking about really. Automatic pier, sounds like to me. That's probably why I change words, 'cause I haven't a clue what words mean half the time." He also said: "That's three words I've learnt today!"
What was The World Of Books?
The World Of Books was a BBC Home Service radio programme dedicated to literature and authors. John Lennon's interview with Wilfred De'Ath, recorded on 16 June 1965, was broadcast on 3 July 1965 and included a reading by Lennon of The Fat Budgie from A Spaniard In The Works.
Did John Lennon write any books?
Yes — John Lennon published two books: In His Own Write (Jonathan Cape, March 1964) and A Spaniard In The Works (Jonathan Cape, June 1965). Both are collections of poems, short stories, and drawings in a surreal, punning style that drew comparisons to Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. In His Own Write sold 300,000 copies in its first printing.
What is The Fat Budgie?
The Fat Budgie is a poem by John Lennon from A Spaniard In The Works (1965). It is a mock-heroic celebration of a budgerigar, written in the style of a Victorian nature poem and undermined by Lennon's characteristic wordplay and bathos. Lennon read it on the BBC Home Service programme The World Of Books on 3 July 1965.
What is The National Health Cow?
The National Health Cow is a poem by John Lennon from A Spaniard In The Works (1965), a piece of surreal social satire about a cow provided by the National Health Service. Lennon read two verses of it in his BBC Today interview with Tim Matthews, recorded on 16 June 1965 and broadcast on 21 June 1965.
→ 16 June 1965: Help! Post-Sync at Twickenham (earlier that day)
→ 12 June 1965: The Beatles MBE Press Conference
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