Kiss Myself Goodbye: The Many Lives of Aunt Munca

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To quote Sir Walter Scott "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!" This book is a delicious account of how a family has risen in society, whilst all the time not ever being true to its roots due to the tangled web of lies and deceit.

Kiss Myself Goodbye is the name of a song the author remembers from a trip to a nightclub with his Aunt Munca but it's also remarkably fitting as Munca spent her lifetime kissing her real self goodbye and reinventing herself. They often say the truth is stranger than fiction and that's definitely true of Munca's life. Mount with Margaret Thatcher at a party in London, April 1992. Photograph: Dave Benett/Getty Images Mount is one of our finest prose stylists and Kiss Myself Goodbye is a witty, moving and beautifully crafted account of one woman's determination to live to the full. * Daily Telegraph *Ferdinand Mount’s Aunt Betty, or Aunt Munca as she wanted him to call her, was married to his father’s brother, Greig, who was accordingly known as Unca. The names Unca and Munca were lifted from Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice: Hunca Munca, who lives beneath the floorboards, vandalises a doll’s house when she discovers that the delicious looking food on the plates is made of plaster. The book is like a breath of fresh air and un like any other book I have ever read. It is quirky, quintessentially British and very charming. It is also fascinating, entertaining and funny. The author has a very relaxed style of writing, almost conversational in nature. Add to that any number of wry comments and amusing asides, as well as the ability to laugh at the ridiculous antics of his own family and you really have a very special book indeed. On top of all that it is an exceedingly enjoyable romp through the social history of British high society during most of the 20th Century. I particularly enjoyed Mount's journey of discovery through genealogy research, the way he found out so much from birth, marriage and death certificates. He has a difficult job as Munca didn't seem to tell the truth about herself so every single detail is hard won. There's such a feeling of love from the author to his family - regardless if they are biological or otherwise, this marks the author out as someone who has taken a huge amount of thought as to how and why this book needs to be written.

Also on the shelves is a photograph of Georgie at about eight years old. She does look haunted. None of the gaiety, confidence, or spontaneity of childhood is apparent. Instead, her expression seems to ask: ‘Am I doing this right?’ Her hair has been glossed into perfect, golden ringlets more appropriate for a Moulin Rouge attraction than a child. There was nothing wrong with her original nose. Why on earth did Munca arrange that operation, saddling Georgie with an implausible story about falling over, which she had to recite if anyone recognised the tell-tale, too-perfect symmetry of the nose-job. Fortunately, before their friendship broke down, my father photographed Georgie across four decades — images that show her at her happiest. They say most families have a skeleton in the closet somewhere along the line. The skeletons in this book wouldn’t fit into a closet – they’d need a whole graveyard. This book proves the maxim that fact is stranger than fiction, and then some. If it was a novel, it would be dismissed as complete nonsense, so wildly implausible that it couldn’t possibly be taken seriously. But it’s not a novel, it’s all documented fact. 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. But his evocation of it is beautiful and faultless. Its singular topography stirs him; he grasps that, more than most cities, it is a collection of villages; he has such feeling for its hulking chapels, crumbling steel mills and working poor. Closing the book, I wondered all over again why anyone would want to apply identity politics to the writing of literature – a good writer can go anywhere – and then I sent its author an embarrassing fan letter in which I detailed various Cooke family locations (girl guide hut, pub, Granny’s outside loo) and their precise relationship to places in his narrative. Possibly alarmed by my ardent tone, he replied by return. Which is how I came to know that, unlike me, Munca did not maintain her flat vowels after the rest of her moved south. Older women on film Their will was the one way in which the Mounts might have said ‘sorry’ to Georgie, but — astoundingly — they appear not to have felt that they had anything for which to say sorry. Furthermore, they had clearly primed the trustees to operate against Georgie’s best interests. This process of making a request to the trust was so arduous and frightening for Georgie, it may have hastened her death.

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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. There is an interesting story here, but it’s let down by the writing. The tale of Aunt Munca is complicated enough without the author making it more confusing. The story goes off at lots of tangents and into unnecessary details, when what we really want is to build a picture of this woman who goes by many names in her lifetime. I felt like I was reading an early draft, before the book was properly streamlined and edited. Aunt Munca never told the truth about anything. Calling herself after the mouse in a Beatrix Potter story, she was already a figure of mystery during the childhood of her nephew Ferdinand Mount. Half a century later, a series of startling revelations sets him off on a tortuous quest to find out who this extraordinary millionairess really was. Georgie Johnson with Charles Donovan, 1975 (Photo: Hugh Donovan / used by permission of Charles Donovan) 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.

And I also want to offer a different perspective. The Georgie of Mount’s book is a broken, tragic alcoholic with what Mount calls, more than once, a ‘ruined life’. It makes for gripping prose, but the Georgie I knew for 40 years was ebullient, fun-loving, bright, and cheerful. There was almost always a humorous glint in her eyes. Yes, she was complicated, but who isn’t? Mount is one of our finest prose stylists and Kiss Myself Goodbye is a witty, moving and beautifully crafted account of one woman’s determination to live to the full. The moral of the tale is that the fabrications of a lifetime will unravel after death, especially if there happens to be an assiduous nephew to hand. Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (PG apologizes for the paywall, but hasn’t figured out a way around it.) The mystery of the borrowed baby nags at Mr. Mount, as do other, seemingly related conundrums of Betty’s life: her ruthless sabotaging of Georgie’s marriage plans, the serial romances of her past, her hazy connection to her jaunty brother Buster, her real age—her real name(s), for heaven’s sake. “I had tugged the thread,” he writes of his growing curiosity, “and I could not resist following it to the end.”If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. I was so pleased to read the last chapter to find out what had happened to everyone in the story. What meticulous research Mr Mount has done. What a wonderful time Ferdinand Mount has had researching this rich fount of fantastic lies woven into a massive web of destructive deceit by his Aunt Munca! This is a glorious family history too outrageous for fiction with ever yet more astounding revelations in every chapter. I loved it. 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. In fact, it was after 20 that Georgie came alive, having achieved a measure of separation from the Mounts. She married Claude Johnson, owner of a computer company. My parents, Meg and Hugh, were at the wedding and later introduced Georgie and Claude to another couple, the artist, Andre de Moller and his wife, June. Everyone was within walking distance in the London borough of Westminster — my parents on West Halkin Street in Belgravia, Georgie and Claude in Marylebone and Andre and June on Cadogan Square in Knightsbridge. It was the late ’60s/early ’70s and London was the most fun it had ever been.

It's written beautifully and with feeling for those involved, where there could have been a well-deserved disgust at how people have acted, there's a presence of it all happening 'in its time' and that despising the behaviour wouldn't be healthy or fair, as many of the conclusions are based on very well-researched hunches, if not actual fact. The amount of research is staggering and adds hugely to the narrative, and the results show just what can be achieved in researching your heritage - at your peril!

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. As I read on, I noticed that these scenes had been described in meticulous detail, but I’d been erased from them. Georgie was one remove away from a birth-parent to me. Indeed, she was far more a mother to me than Munca ever was to her. Imagine reading a book about a mother-figure in your life, describing with painstaking precision occasions where you were present but excising you from them. It stung. I was startled that Mount would do something so improper. When two people telephoned me to say they’d noticed the same thing, I realised my reaction wasn’t just down to bruised ego and pettiness.