The Cutting Edge: The Story of the Beatles’ Hairdresser Who Defined an Era, will be published on 24 August 2017. A special limited edition is also available.

The Beatles’ hair changed the world. As their increasingly wild, untamed manes grew, to the horror of parents everywhere, they set off a cultural revolution as the most tangible symbol of the Sixties’ psychedelic dream of peace, love and playful rebellion. At the centre of this epochal change was Leslie Cavendish, hairdresser to the Beatles and designer of the four iconic men’s hairstyles, a brand image as immediately recognizable as the Nike swoosh or the Coca-Cola bottle. But just how did a fifteen-year-old Jewish school dropout from an undistinguished North London suburb, with no particular artistic talent or showbusiness connections, end up literally at the cutting edge of Sixties’ fashion in just four years? His story – honest, always entertaining and inspiring – parallels the meteoric rise of the Beatles themselves, and is no less astounding.