Kiss Myself Goodbye The Many Lives of Aunt Munca

From the bestselling author of the memoir Cold Cream comes this affectionate, bizarre, tragi-comical tale of Ferdinand Mount's Aunt Munca. Munca--named after the mouse in the Beatrix Potter stories--never told the truth about anything. She was already a figure of mystery during her nephew Ferdinand Mount's childhood, and half a century on he embarks on a quest to uncover the true story of his beloved aunt. His startling revelations are both shocking and sad, involving multiple deceptions, secret identities, bigamous marriages, and an extraordinary and at times frustrating trail that leads Mount all the way back from the streets of Sheffield at the end of the Victorian era to the higher echelons of English society in the inter-war years. This is a book that will appeal to readers of family intrigue and mystery (like Laura Cummings's 2019 bestseller and Baillie Gifford-prize-shortlisted On Chapel Sands: My mother and other missing persons); to those who are interested in the social history of 20th Century Britain, told from an unusual and unconventional perspective; and to the aficionados of memorable aunts in literature, now a mini-genre, from Dickens' Betsy Trotwood to Graham Greene's Aunt Augusta. It will also delight readers who loved Ferdinand Mount's earlier autobiography. From the bestselling author of the memoir Cold Cream comes this affectionate, bizarre, tragi-comical tale of Ferdinand Mount's Aunt Munca. Munca--named after the mouse in the Beatrix Potter stories--never told the truth about anything. She was already a figure of mystery during her nephew Ferdinand Mount's childhood, and half a century on he embarks on a quest to uncover the true story of his beloved aunt. His startling revelations are both shocking and sad, involving multiple deceptions, secret identities, bigamous marriages, and an extraordinary and at times frustrating trail that leads Mount all the way back from the streets of Sheffield at the end of the Victorian era to the higher echelons of English society in the inter-war years. This is a book that will appeal to readers of family intrigue and mystery (like Laura Cummings's 2019 bestseller and Baillie Gifford-prize-shortlisted On Chapel Sands: My mother and other missing persons); to those who are interested in the social history of 20th Century Britain, told from an unusual and unconventional perspective; and to the aficionados of memorable aunts in literature, now a mini-genre, from Dickens' Betsy Trotwood to Graham Greene's Aunt Augusta. It will also delight readers who loved Ferdinand Mount's earlier autobiography.