Back to Black: Cilla. The Authorised Photographic Memoir

The stunning images contained within these pages celebrate Cilla Black's remarkable showbusiness career. They also celebrate a woman who grew up in the spotlight of international stardom yet was never blinded to the importance of family and friends. Her warm ability to communicate directly with everyone she encountered has won her a lifetime of devoted fans. Musical and comedic, her fifty-year career has swept her from the glamour of Sixties recording success to unprecedented TV dominance as a female host. The fact she made it all seem so easy is a testament to her consummate professionalism. There is only one Cilla and we are proud to look back at her inspiring contribution over the past five decades. Anyone who had a heart would be moved by the story of Britain's top-selling female recording artist of the Sixties: Cilla Black. By the age of twenty-one she had jumped from obscurity as a clerk-typist in Liverpool to chart success. Warm, glamorous, mischievous: this volume captures the confidence, egalitarianism and vivacity of a performer who personified the heady freedom of her time. It also celebrates her fifty unique years in showbusiness - conquering that formative decade in the charts, on television and with top billing in the West End; going on to become Britain's most loved television presenter with the audience busting shows Surprise Surprise and Blind Date. She's still surprising us today. Hers is a magical blend of grit and grace. The only woman managed by Brian Epstein, the genius behind the Mersey sound and the success of her friends, The Beatles, she was described by him in this way: "She is what she is - an untutored girl from a happy, working-class family in a lowly part of Liverpool. She's not easily intimidated by anything or anyone." He spotted the artistry in those qualities. The photographs in this elegant book celebrate that unique artistry and life.