• Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick
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Last Train to Memphis

The Rise of Elvis Presley - 'The richest portrait of Presley we have ever had' Sunday Telegraph
  • Author
    • Peter Guralnick
£16.99
£16.99
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The first volume of Peter Guralnick's critically acclaimed Elvis Presley biographies

'Elvis steps from the pages. You can feel him breathe' BOB DYLAN

'Wonderful' RODDY DOYLE

Last Train to Memphis is arguably the first serious biography that refuses to dwell on the myth of Elvis. Aiming instead to portray in vivid, dramatic terms the life and career of this outstanding artistic and cultural phenomenon, it draws together a plethora of documentary and interview material to create a superbly coherent and plausible narrative.

This is the first of three volumes from music critic and author, Peter Guralnick, and covers Presley's stratospheric rise to stardom up to his departure for Germany in 1958. Last Train to Memphis is undoubtedly the benchmark by which other biographies of Elvis are judged.

'Soars above all other accounts of Elvis' GUARDIAN

'A triumph of biographical art... profound and moving' NEW YORK TIMES
  • Published: Apr 23 2026
  • Pages: 576
  • 196 x 128mm
  • ISBN: 9781399641463
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Press Reviews

  • SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
    A wonderful book...Guralnick gives us an Elvis of real flesh and blood...the richest and most detailed protrait of Presely we have ever had.
  • Wonderful…Guralnick deserves to live in Graceland - RODDY DOYLE
    Unrivalled...Elvis steps out of these pages, you can feel him breathe, this book cancels out all others - BOB DYLAN
  • Bob Dylan
    Unrivalled... Elvis steps from the pages. You can feel him breathe. This book cancels out all others
  • Sunday Telegraph
    A wonderful book... Guralnick gives us an Elvis of real flesh and blood... the richest and most detailed portrait of Presley we have ever had
  • Roddy Doyle
    Wonderful... Guralnick deserves to live in Graceland
  • New York Times Book Review
    A triumph of biographical art... profound and moving... Even the minor revelations are positively spellbinding... Guralnick's narrative is rendered with an intimate, restrained intensity eerily reminiscent of the plaintive tone of Presley's ballads, that tremulous yearning of America itself
  • Time
    Altogether splendid... It is the particular and spectacular achievement of Last Train to Memphis that it holds both the making of the history and the beginning of the myth in firm, simple and compassionate focus... Guralnick paints this world with perspective, respect and great decency; it is one of the book's triumphs
  • Kirkus
    Guralnick takes a sensible and sensitive approach, tracing the roots of an American dream... Guralnick perfectly captures Elvis's mixture of naivety and shrewdness... A serious, musically literate and historically attuned biography. An American epic that belongs on every bookshelf
  • Irish Times
    The first definitive work on Presley's life
  • Guardian
    Soars above all other books-for-bucks accounts of Elvis... Excellent
  • Daily Telegraph
    The adjective 'definitive' seems almost inadequate
  • Time Out
    The writer's decades of research leap off the page. A classic
  • Mojo
    It's hard to reclaim Elvis from the weight of history and slander, but Guralnick does it beautifully... [He] tells this 20th century myth with a fine regard for his subject's humanity