McCartney Times

Celebrating the birth date of Cynthia Lennon – The White Feather Foundation

Very Special Event Online Charity Auction

To celebrate the birth date of Cynthia Lennon we will be giving you the opportunity to bid on truly unique items that were favourite belongings of Cynthia.
The auction of which all proceeds will be donated to The Cynthia Lennon Scholarships for Girls will commence on Thursday 10th September at 15:00 (GMT)
Further details to follow in lead up to event.

The White Feather Foundation

Cynthia Powell Lennon (née Powell; 10 September 1939 – 1 April 2015) was an English artist best known as the first wife of John Lennon and the mother of Julian Lennon.

Born in Blackpool and raised in Hoylake on the Wirral Peninsula, Cynthia was accepted into the Junior Art School at the age of 12 and later enrolled at the Liverpool College of Art. Lennon also attended the college, and a meeting with Cynthia in a calligraphy class led to their relationship. When John was performing in Hamburg with the Beatles, Cynthia rented his bedroom at 251 Menlove Avenue in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton from his aunt and legal guardian, Mimi Smith. After Cynthia became pregnant, she and John married on 23 August 1962 at the Mount Pleasant register office in Liverpool and the couple lived at Kenwood in Weybridge from 1964 to 1968, where she kept house and participated with her husband in a London-based social life. In 1968, Lennon left her for Japanese artist Yoko Ono; as a result, the couple’s divorce was legally granted on 8 November 1968 on the grounds of adultery.

She married Italian hotelier Roberto Bassanini in 1970, divorcing him in 1976. In 1978, she married English engineer John Twist, but divorced him in 1982. After her divorce from Twist, she changed her name back to “Lennon” by deed poll and met Jim Christie, her partner for the next 17 years. She was later married to Noel Charles, a night club owner from Barbados, from 2002 until his death in 2013. She published a book of memoirs, A Twist of Lennon, in 1978, and a more intimate biography, John, in 2005. Over the years, she staged several auctions of memorabilia associated with her life with Lennon. She lived in Calvià in Majorca until her death from cancer in 2015.