[4] While some of John Lennon's first book, In His Own Write, had been written years earlier, he mostly wrote A Spaniard in the Works over the course of 1964.

[8] During the same holiday, Lennon occupied himself by reading the books left on their private boat, including a complete set of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories.

[16] The title piece, for example, opens: "Jesus El Pifco was a foreigner and he knew it ... a garlic eating, stinking, little yellow greasy fascist bastard catholic Spaniard.

[5] Critic John Harris describes the book as a "more warped compendium" than its predecessor,[24] and that the satiric piece "The General Erection" proved that Lennon "had a little more political nous than he let on".

[25] He writes that "[d]etonating conformity was one of the few themes Lennon's pen mastered", though his drawings were more elegant in conveying "emotional mayhem".

[26] Professor of English Ian Marshall describes Lennon's prose as "mad wordplay", noting Lewis Carroll's influence on his writing style and suggesting the book anticipates the lyrics of Lennon's later songs, including "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "I Am the Walrus".

[29] In his 1983 book, Literary Lennon: A Comedy of Letters, writer James Sauceda provides a postmodern dissection of both In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works.

[31] Riley calls Sauceda's insights "keen", but suggests more can be understood by analyzing the works with reference to Lennon's biography.

"[33] Riley suggests that the poem's "bitingly satiric reversal" serves to satirise the tendency of British odes to always move towards a happy ending.

[13] In her study of Beatles historiography, historian Erin Torkelson Weber suggests that it reinforced perceptions of Lennon as "the smart one" of the group, and that the band's first film A Hard Day's Night further emphasised that view.

[39] The collection, Skywriting by Word of Mouth, mostly consists of writings made during Lennon's "house-husband" period during his late 1970s break from recording.