roll band in the world broke up, the Fab Four are big business again, re-forming through the miracles of digital technology with a `new' single, Free As A Bird, and the first of three double CD collections to accompany the six-hour ABC-TV documentary The Beatles Anthology.

As the world succumbs once again to Beatlemania, RG Magazine this month looks back to Bermuda's own Beatles connection.

By the summer of 1980, ex-Beatle John Lennon had not made an album in five years, instead becoming a reclusive house husband to Yoko Ono in New York's Dakota Mansion. His marriage was in trouble and, creatively, Lennon was struggling. In June that year he sailed to Bermuda where the Island's peaceful atmosphere rekindled the creative energy of one of modern music's true geniuses.

Lennon described the Island as "paradise''. Here he wrote and recorded demo tapes of songs that would later appear on the successful Double Fantasy album, whose title was taken from the name of a flower Lennon saw in the Botanical Gardens. Six months later, just as Lennon's career was taking off again, he was gunned down outside the Dakota by Mark Chapman.

In the December issue of RG, free with tomorrow's edition of The Royal Gazette, Roger Crombie chronicles the seven weeks the superstar spent in Bermuda, talking to those who met him.

December also marks World AIDS Day and RG senior writer Elizabeth Harvey investigates the plight of the forgotten statistics in the fight against AIDS: the children left behind when one or both parents die of the disease.

Among this month's other features: Controversial new Police Commissioner Colin Coxall comes under the microscope in a profile by Marina Esplin-Jones; how The Royal Gazette Christmas Short Story Contest reveals much about how Bermuda's youngsters view their day-to-day lives; plus RG's 16-page Christmas Gift Catalogue reveals what's in store in Bermuda's best shops.

It's a bumper issue of RG, packed with great reading for the holidays. Don't miss your copy -- only with The Royal Gazette tomorrow.