The Beatles and Beyond Don Short

At the end of 2015, I received some very exciting post from Don, with a note inside asking me if I would like to help him with his memoirs.

Regular readers will recognise Don Short, as he has been featured on here a few times: once, way back in the early years of blogging, I interviewed him on the Golden Age of Journalism and more recently last year – ‘Don Short Journalist‘, and in a Christmas Books feature.

As a sort of New Year’s Resolution, we started the book properly at the beginning of 2016.

I have really enjoyed helping to research and source articles and stories…

And helping to organise and assemble the book…

It has been such an exciting journey! From deciding what kind of book we wanted it to be to unearthing forgotten stories and re-structuring the book so it’s an easy and enjoyable read…

We thought we were going to be lucky for the design of the front cover of the book, as my mother (and Don’s daughter) Amanda happens to be a fine artist and book designer (she designed the cover for ‘Of Gods and Men’ by sister Daisy and many more) and she set to work on an eye-catching cover. Something hand-drawn, in a design that encapsulates the book as a whole, without deviating too much from the existing covers on our publisher’s website: Don, walking down Fleet Street, the world-famous home of journalism; Don’s scoops and top headlines from his career as a journalist over a collage of his clippings, tantalising and textured to contrast with the blue sky.

*The initial draft-design mock-up for Don’s* *book c**ove*r, *missing the title and author name.* © Amanda Short

But, in the end, the publishers made us this one:

Very retro! Certainly a fearless idea to position the journalist-author centre-stage. Regal colours, red and gold, in a font with shadows that fade in and out, like the old-fashioned days of 1990s WordArt. Nostalgia all round!