Kiss Myself Goodbye: The Many Lives of Aunt Munca

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But something tells me that Munca will be around for a while yet. She can’t be shaken off. I will always think of her, and I never even knew her. Georgie knew that if something was precious to her, it had to be kept away from her ‘family’, so I never met her parents. My mother describes Greig as ‘gentle’, and gentleness is an admirable quality. But when it’s corrupted, ‘gentle’ becomes ‘biddable’. With more resolve, perhaps Greig might have mitigated some of Munca’s cruelties to Georgie or thought about correcting the final one: the will. It is to her credit that she only began to withdraw after a health ordeal hit her hard. As soon as Georgie told me about her oral cancer diagnosis, I came to her side. She was understandably terrified of an operation that was going to remove parts of her face. I came to stay again, just before the surgery, for moral support. Although the surgeons left her with only a faint scar and some damage to the inside of her mouth, she took it badly. It had a slight but noticeable effect on her diction. After all that childhood conditioning about perfection, no wonder what seemed like a miraculous recovery to her friends was nothing of the sort to her. When we spent Christmas 2007 together, she didn’t want to eat in front of me, because the damage to her mouth made eating a more ungainly process. Eventually, she began skipping eating altogether, subsisting on build-up drinks.

The second thing was the mention of Sheffield and there is a fabulous lengthy chapter in the book about my home city in the late 19th and early 20th century. I'm sure any reader would agree that there is something extra special about reading about a place you know well. Each time you think you have finally figured out what the conclusion will be of his aunt's life you discover the story is bigger and more complex than you could have imagined.Delightfully compulsive and unforgettably original. Mount unpeels the layers of this mysterious life with the tenacity of an experienced detective and the excitement of a fresh-eyed enthusiast. The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Please review our Through years of painstaking research Mount has discovered all. The 1930s popular song which he has taken for the title of his book opens with "I'm gonna kiss myself goodbye / goodbye, goodbye / I'm gonna get my wings and fly / Up high, up high". And boy! From her lamentably impoverished childhood in Sheffield, a dead labourer-father and a scant education in the unmerciful institution run by the Sisters of Mercy for the the very poor, did Munca fly! PG didn’t mind that this client neglected to pay a legal bill on occasion because she provided him with so many great stories for use during gatherings with his brothers and sisters in the legal profession during conferences sponsored by various bar associations. I found my mind venturing elsewhere and having to reread entire sections because I had lost focus. Not a good sign.

Here is where I should disclose a personal interest. Georgie was my Godmother. By that I don’t mean someone who organised an outing once a year and sent a Christmas card. I mean someone who joined my parents in loving me profoundly and taking on responsibility for my development. I didn’t expect to be mentioned in Mount’s book. I’m not important and I’m certainly not important to the story. But then, right at the end, came two scenes at which I was present. This is a nice attitude, but it requires context: Mount was deeply embedded in the very government that considered re-criminalising homosexuality and introduced Section 28, which consigned a generation of young LGBT people to unnecessary torment, unable to seek counsel or support or help. It was the very same government that took enormous trouble to re-stigmatise parenthood outside marriage, reserving its harshest criticisms for single mothers rather than fathers. The idea that such cruelties now lie beyond his imagination is, for me, a suspension of disbelief too far. And then there's that gorgeous cover with the image of a glamorous looking man and woman lightly holding hands. I was desperate to know their story. But then, five years on, a relationship forced my hand and keeping it a secret was killing me. I had never come out to anyone before and I worked on the assumption that everyone was homophobic unless they clearly and repeatedly indicated otherwise without being prompted. It was a nerve-shredding way to live, never allowing myself to relax or to trust. I posted my coming-out letter to Georgie and braced myself. Just 48 hours later, she replied, “Darling, I’ve been trying to drag you out of the closet since you were 12.” It remains the perfect example of how Georgie’s frequent acts of love and kindness were never untethered to humour. After years of torment, a lightness rushed into my heart and I was walking on air. Hadley Freeman, author of House of Glass: The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish FamilyI’ve been mixing with these spads [special advisers] and wonks for 40 years,” he says, crunching on a biscuit, “and I’d noticed both the fact that they seem gradually to have become the story themselves, and their increasing eccentricity. Dom [Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser] is only one of dozens I’ve known who’ve been decidedly unusual. But that’s partly what attracts them to the politicians, who are uneasily conscious of being a bit dull and out-of-touch, even if they wouldn’t ever admit it. These wizards are very attractive; their wizardry mesmerises workaday politicians.” Not only do I believe her account, but it makes more sense. The idea that Greig was a heterosexual gripped just once, and only once, by a momentary and inexplicable gay compulsion, is far less plausible. Perhaps he sought ‘reparative therapy’ in his marriage to Munca. Who knows? But it’s more likely that he was trying to conceal his sexuality than to change it. He and Munca certainly entertained large numbers of gay friends, including Liberace. Munca, who clearly thrived on intrigues and pretences, may well have been delighted to enter into a cooked-up marriage. To give you the premise, the author’s uncle, Greig Mount, was from a prominent English family with a new hereditary knighthood. Greig’s wife was a flamboyant character named Betty, aka ‘Munca’. Nearing middle-age, they married in haste because both were running from things and had sharp instincts for the main chance. Munca sought refuge from a mysterious, secret past, Greig from the threat of the revelation of his true sexuality. And it worked. Rather than catching them up, their shadowy histories were miraculously suspended.