QUICK TAKES - March 4, 2009

A university in Liverpool has launched a master of arts degree in the Beatles, the city’s most famous sons.

Liverpool Hope University says on its website that the course entitled the Beatles, Popular Music and Society consists of four 12-week instructional modules and a dissertation.

“There have been over 8,000 books about the Beatles but there has never been serious academic study and that is what we are going to address,” said Mike Brocken, senior lecturer in popular music at Hope. “Forty years on from their breakup, now is the right time and Liverpool is the right place to study the Beatles.”