centre of the family, and when she died in 1998 Paul was, for a long time, inconsolable. No doubt his grief for Linda brought back the loss of his mother.

For Paul to wish he could go back in time and get to know his own mother better is entirely in character for a man whose childhood was, in many ways, cut short by her early death.

Youth is inevitably a selfish time, and it’s only as we get older that we begin to see the world from the perspective of those who’ve gone before us and to understand the struggles they made on our behalf.

By sending her sons to a prestigious grammar, Mary was helping endow Paul with ambition. She didn’t live to see how he used it, butone suspects she’d have been proud when, with his backing, that school was refounded as the Liverpool Institute Of Performing Arts.

John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and many others helped make Paul McCartney the man he became, but Jim and Mary McCartney shaped him first.