11 Facts About Astrid Kirchherr

Sutcliffe was fascinated by the trio, but especially Astrid Kirchherr, and thought they looked like "real bohemians".

Bill Harry later said that when Astrid Kirchherr walked in, every head would immediately turn her way, and that she always captivated the whole room.

The next morning Astrid Kirchherr took photographs with a Rolleicord camera, at a fairground in a municipal park called Hamburger Dom which was close to the Reeperbahn, and in the afternoon she took them all to her mother's house in Altona.

Sutcliffe wrote to friends that he was infatuated with Astrid Kirchherr, and asked her friends which colours, films, books and painters she liked, and whom she fancied.

Everybody was expecting a strange beatnik artist from Hamburg, but Astrid Kirchherr turned up at the Sutcliffes' house at 37 Aigburth Drive, Liverpool, bearing a single long-stemmed orchid in her hand as a present, and dressed in a round-necked cashmere sweater and tailored skirt.

On 10 April 1962, Astrid Kirchherr's mother phoned her daughter at work and told her Sutcliffe had collapsed again, was brought back to the house and an ambulance had been called for.

Three days later Astrid Kirchherr met Lennon, McCartney and Best at the Hamburg airport and told them Sutcliffe had died of a brain haemorrhage.

In 1964, Astrid Kirchherr became a freelance photographer, and with her colleague Max Scheler she took "behind the scenes" photographs of the Beatles during the filming of A Hard Day's Night, as an assignment for the German Stern magazine.

Stern phoned Bill Harry at his Mersey Beat newspaper and asked if he could arrange a photograph of all the groups in Liverpool, so Harry suggested Astrid Kirchherr be the photographer, although Astrid Kirchherr later said she placed an advertisement in the Liverpool Echo newspaper.

The drawings are recollections of places and situations that Voormann clearly remembers, but Astrid Kirchherr had never photographed, or had lost the photographs.

In July 2001, Astrid Kirchherr visited Liverpool to open an exhibition of her work at the Mathew Street art gallery, which is close to the former site of The Cavern Club.