A draft letter from John Lennon to Paul McCartney and his wife Linda exposing the strains of the Fab Four's break up in 1970 is to go under the hammer in London.
The letter, full of deletions, misspellings and profanity, swings between vitriol over the treatment of his wife Yoko Ono and disdain for Linda McCartney to evident affection for Paul.
A spokeswoman for Christie's, which will auction the letter on 4 October for an anonymous owner, said it had last changed hands in the United States in the early 1990s and was expected to fetch more than $200,000.
It is not known if Lennon ever sent a final version of the six page letter, thought to have been written in 1970 or 1971, in which he calls Linda "middle-aged" and "cranky" and predicts her marriage to Paul will not last. In fact it lasted until she died of cancer in 1998.
Lennon was shot dead by crazed fan Mark Chapman outside his New York apartment in 1980.
In the letter, Lennon accuses his friends of hypocrisy over the treatment he and Ono received in the early days of their highly public relationship.
Lennon also repeats his well known views on the band being made Members of the Order of the British Empire in 1965 - an honour he returned publicly four years later.
"I do remember squirming a little - don't you Paul - or do you - as I suspect still believe it all?" the letter says.
Lennon accuses McCartney of letting success go to his head and of believing the Beatles alone sparked the youth revolution that swept the globe.
"Of course we changed the world - but try and follow it through - get off your gold disc and fly," Lennon wrote.
The letter reveals that McCartney and the band's business manager, Alan Klein, tried to stop Lennon announcing his intention to quit because it would damage the band's business interests.
But concludes on a tender note, indicating that Lennon was leaving the door open to resuming severed relations with the McCartneys at a later date.
"In spite of it all, love to you both from us two," the letter ends.