Sir Paul McCartney claims that it was he – and not John Lennon – who politicised the Beatles. He has shunned music magazines to give an interview to an intellectual journal in which he describes how he introduced the group to the “very bad” Vietnam war. It paints a picture at odds with the conventional view of the Beatles, that McCartney was writing pop ditties such as Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da while Lennon was composing overtly political songs such as Revolution. McCartney says he began his political awakening by meeting Bertrand Russell, then in his nineties, at the latter’s home in London...