The Beatles original management contract with Brian Epstein is to be auction in London next month.

The document, which is expected to raise £250,000, was signed by all four members of the band in January 1962.

But Epstein refused to ink his name on the contract until October of the same year when he had secured the band's first record deal.

The deal, eventually signed with EMI, was for the right to the band's album 'Love Me Do'.

In addition to the signatures of John Winston Lennon, George Harrison, James Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr – under his birth name of Richard Starkey – the contract also features signatures from McCartney and Harrison's parents, who had to give consent as their children were under 21.

The agreement will go on under the hammer at the Idea Generation Gallery in London on September 4th.

(by Jason Gregory)