In 1963, when Beatlemania was just beginning to explode in Britain, photographer Terence Spencer returned from working on news stories in Africa to find his daughter - then thirteen - begging him to do a feature on "the Fab Four". The editors of "Life" magazine were at first unimpressed by the idea; in America the group was still practically unknown. But after the Beatles had agreed to let Spencer travel with them for four months, in January 1964 "Life" did indeed publish a feature, just before the band launched into its historic and triumphant tour of the States.;Thirty years later, 5,000 negatives of Spencer's Beatles photographs - virtually all of them unpublished - resurfaced and were sold at auction by Sotheby's of London. This book contains the cream of these lost pictures, presenting a unique portrait of the Beatles at a time when they were on the brink of international stardom - still anonymous enough to allow Spencer intimate access, yet already famous enough to need protection from their multitude of fans.;The fruits of that intimacy, published here for the first time, are a collection of photographs that portray, with unprecedented candour, the Beatles backstage, on stag