The Beatles: An Illustrated Diary

by Har van Fulpen

In 1982, Har, president of the Dutch Beatles Fan Club, hired Lydia and me to translate his Beatles Dagboek into English for Plexus Publishing. To our disappointment, we were not listed anywhere as the translators, although Har's "Thank You, Girl" acknowledgements page does include this line: "Lydia and Josh Pachter were extremely helpful in the preparation of the book." Imagine how Har must have felt, though, to be named on the cover as H.V. Fulpen....

Under his actual name, Har and his wife Annemieke ran Uitgeverij Drukwerk, a comic-book company which published — and credited Lydia and me for! — our English-to-Dutch translations of R. Crumb's Mr. Snoid and Gilbert Shelton's Fat Freddy's Cat and Thoroughly Ripped with the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.

Perhaps this is a good place to sneak in my all-time favorite Beatles trivia question: Name two Beatles songs which end with the words "yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." (That's four "yeahs," and here's a hint: they're all in English, not German.) If you want to guess, you can email me — but I warn you, almost nobody ever gets them both right....

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