It was 60 years ago today… schoolboy’s tape of the Beatles transports us to an era of optimism | Samira Ahmed

Private-school pupils unselfconsciously screamed for their working-class heroes

What’s on the set list? Why did he only tell you about the tape now after 60 years? Two of the questions I’ve been bombarded with since I made public the existence of an almost complete concert recording of the Beatles on the cusp of their great breakout.

There’s a third question of my own: why has the news that 15-year-old John Bloomfield made and kept a tape recording of the Beatles playing at Stowe boarding school in Buckinghamshire on 4 April 1963 gladdened our hearts quite so much? Answers to all three lie ahead.

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