* Philip Larkin in his 1974 poem ‘Annus Mirabilis’ famously said that sexual intercourse began with the Beatles’ first LP in 1963.

* That same day, just a few streets away, Sylvia Plath, aged thirty, committed suicide in her flat in Primrose Hill. The juxtaposing of these two events was recalled some years later in a poem by the Liverpool poet Paul Farley, Professor of Poetry at Lancaster University, entitled ‘11 February 1963’, published in The Ice Age in 2002.

* Angus McBean (1904–90), a well-known theatre and society photographer of the day.

* What’s an EP, Granddad? An Extended Play record played at 45 revs per minute, like a single, but whereas traditional 45s only had room for three or four minutes of music an EP could hold twice that, thought it wasn’t as big as an LP, which held a lot more songs and played at 33 revs.

* Derek Taylor (1934–97) was probably the cleverest, most talented, most creative of all those who joined the inner Beatles gang, first as PA to Brian Epstein and then as the Beatles’ PR.

* The manuscript is one of those today in Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

* NB five songs, not six. One of the tracks, ‘Flying’, was an instrumental.

* In the end, Paul stayed six weeks, John and George about two months.