Wonderful Today: The Autobiography
Pattie Boyd
Headline, 6 pounds

There is no doubt that Pattie Boyd, top model of the ‘60s and wife of the two great rock icons George Harrison and Eric Clapton, has an extraordinary story to tell. Her autobiography, Wonderful Today, is mostly unputdownable, even if it skims over details that readers would most want to know from an insider; like the break-up of the Beatles.

Boyd was married to Harrison at the height of Beatlemania and there are some nice anecdotes about how the Foursome dodged the press by leaving hotels in laundry baskets. However, there is practically no insight into their world of music and just a few pages on their childlike devotion to manager Brian Epstein, who is credited with turning the lads from Liverpool into millionaires.

Luckily for readers, Boyd concentrates mostly on her two marriages and her modelling career and breezes over her troubled childhood in Kenya with an indifferent mother and a stern stepfather. Wonderful Today paints a vivid picture of the swinging ‘60s in London; there were parties with Yule Brynner and the Rolling Stones and the age of experimentation was just beginning. Except on the beach, limbs hadn’t been seen before in fashion and suddenly, women could flaunt thigh-high boots. The Beatles had just discovered their spiritual side and were exploring Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

It was a wild time in a crazy decade, when uppers and downers were the norm, and LSD and heroin were just making their presence felt. Like her fashionable contemporaries, Boyd stayed mostly stoned for the next decade or so.

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