Adaptation of Paul McCartney's Rupert and the frog song, illustrated with stills from the film.

Adaptation of Paul McCartney's Rupert and the frog song, illustrated with stills from the film.

Paul McCartney's songwriting output as a member of the Beatles, mainly with his co-writer John Lennon, has been exhaustively documented over the years. Now, taking 50 key songs from his five-decade career since the break-up of the Fab Four, Paul McCartney: The Stories Behind 50 Classic Songs takes an in-depth look at the post-Sixties work of one of popular music's most versatile and prolific composers and performers. Paul McCartney has been a genuine pop idol, a cutting-edge experimenter, and in later years recognized as an international musical treasure. The 50 selections from his vast songwriting catalogue highlighted in Paul McCartney: The Stories Behind 50 Classic Songs mark half a century of musical creativity by a true icon of popular music. Each song includes full session details, personnel lists and chart data and is described in detail, from original inspiration to the final release. Quotes from session musicians and studio personnel – and star guests such as Stevie Wonder, Elvis Costello and Kanye West – bring the making of every song to life, alongside a wealth of related photographs in and out of the studio.

He is one of the most famous, most wealthy people on the planet, and yet he remains little-known and understood as a personality. At long last, Paul McCartney is the subject of a major, deeply researched, psychologically acute biography. It tells a story that will illuminate and surprise. The publication finds McCartney - who turns 70 in 2012 - revitalized as a performer (touring with a set of mostly Beatles songs) and a man buffeted by profound changes in recent years: the death of his first wife, Linda; the death of George Harrison; a second marriage, to Heather Mills, and its spectacular failure, the fall-out from which is still crashing around him.

In this ingenious and imaginative - nearly wordless - picture book, frogs in a pond lift off on their lily pads and fly to a nearby town where they zoom through a woman's living room, encounter a dog playing in his yard, and distract a bathrobe-clad citizen from his midnight snack. Who knows what will happen next Tuesday?