RINGO STARR A Life (2005 UK 416-page softback book by Alan Clayson, already a successful musician by the time he joined The Beatles, his garrulous humour & dour quips provided the perfect foil for Lennon’s caustic sniping, yet the joking masked adarker streak to his life & later years saw him snared by the bottle & trapped in a spiral of depression, self-doubt & sickness, covering his life from deprived Liverpool upbringing to his time with the Beatles & beyond, portraying the lifeof a tireless optimist & survivor of both extremes of the economic spectrum - Exhaustive, warm & unflinchingly frank)