‘Book of the Year’ for Paul Muldoon

16 December 2021

Edited by Honorary Fellow and prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, Paul McCartney’s The Lyrics has won the coveted title of Waterstones Book of the Year.

The two-volume work, published in November, brings together McCartney’s lyrics from 1956 to the present with photographs and documents from his personal archive. Accompanying each of the 154 songs is a literary commentary by Muldoon, the result of many conversations with McCartney over the past five years. Muldoon, who was Oxford’s Professor of Poetry between 1999 and 2004, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish poet and former poetry editor of The New Yorker. He has taught poetry at Princeton University since 1987 and, since 2013, songwriting.

The Waterstones prize winner is chosen by the company’s booksellers, who vote for the titles they have most enjoyed recommending to their customers in the past year. “Paul McCartney has fashioned, through the explorations of his songs with the poet Paul Muldoon, a fascinating insight into his life and creative genius,” said managing director James Daunt. “The booksellers of Waterstones are proud to celebrate this magnificent and deeply original book.”

Find out more about the creative and collaborative process behind the book in this interview with Muldoon from Princeton University.