Julia Baird

Baird worked as a special needs teacher, and after Lennon's death she wrote John Lennon, My Brother (with Geoffrey Giuliano) and gave up working in 2004 to write Imagine This - Growing up with my brother John Lennon. She is now a director of Cavern City Tours in Liverpool.

Baird's mother, Julia Lennon, was the fourth of five children in the Stanley family: Mary, known as 'Mimi' (1906-1991), Elizabeth 'Mater' (1908-1976), Anne 'Nanny' (1911-1988), Julia 'Judy' (1914-1958), and Harriet 'Harrie' (1916-1972).

Lennon was Julia's first child by Alfred Lennon, although she later had a daughter called Victoria (renamed Ingrid) after an affair with a Welsh soldier while Alfred was at sea. Julia was forced to give up the child for adoption after intense pressure from her father and her sisters. Although they had known each other previously, Julia started dating Dykins while working in a café near Mosspits, which was Lennon's primary school. Dykins was said to be a good-looking, well-dressed man who was several years older than Julia and worked at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool as a wine steward. Julia later moved into a small flat in Gateacre with Dykins, who had access to rationed goods like alcohol, chocolate, silks and cigarettes. The Stanley sisters called Dykins a "Spiv", because of his pencil-thin moustache, margarine-coated hair, and pork-pie hat, but the young Lennon called him "Twitchy" because of a physical tic and nervous cough Dykins had. Read Less