One of the greatest showmen of the twentieth century Freddie Mercury, was a great pretender, a killer queen and a champion of the world with his searing on-stage energy with an unparalleled unique voice. Behind the musician, lyricist’s glamour and the creative force behind one of the most culturally significant and musically diverse bands the world has ever seen, his former fiancée and confidante Mary Austin recollects in A Life in Lyrics, Mercury could wouldn’t countenance the dreary wastelands beyond Zone 1 when buying a house for himself: “He didn’t want anything that felt suburban. It had to be London”.The book contains reproductions of Mercury’s handwritten lyric sheets and other jottings, which were found in Garden Lodge, the handsome Kensington home that he bought in 1980 from a scion of the Hoare banking family.  After his death in 1991, it was left to Austin, whose reminiscences accompany the lyric sheets. There are also photos of Freddie Mercury at work and play, strutting the stage with Queen in an outrageous harlequin unitard or beaming with friends by a bauble-bedecked Christmas tree.

Mercury first met Austin in 1970, where the new band was discussing possible names. Brain May’s clunky suggestion is Build Your Own Boat, which Austin (originally a friend of his) favours. Happily, Mercury’s suggestion of Queen triumphs. A crossing-out in the lyric sheet shows, a similar moment of inspiration led him to recast the working title of a song from “Mongolian Rhapsody” to “Bohemian Rhapsody”- the most magical six minute of music in chart history ever.This masterpiece, with its unconventional lack of choruses and its multiple stylistic changes, underline Mercury’s unique originality. Somewhere in his hinterland was a childhood in Zanzibar and a prestigious boarding school in India. He grew up in a Parsee family that followed Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s oldest surviving religions. They fled Zanzibar amid ethnic violence after the African island’s independence from Britain in 1963. Freddie’s former name Farrokh Bulsara, and “Mercury” is a name derived from his schooldays, came when Queen took their name – remained close to his parents. “Bohemian Rhapsody” whose lyrics were scrawled in a  hasty cursive handwriting, on a stationery from British Midland, the airline for hwihc his father worked. The singer cleverly his family background behind a veil.From “Seven Seas of Rhye” to “The Miracle”, his writing drew on religion, fantasy and morality.  He was similarly unforthcoming about is sexuality. When his engagement to Austin foundered in 1977, he told her that he was bisexual. “No, You’re gay,” she replied. His moustachioed “Castro clone” look, adopted from US gay culture, made a famous form of exhibitionism from an aspect of himself that he wouldn’t openly divulge. He also kept his Aids diagnosis from public knowledge until 24 hours before his death. Mercury left most of his belongings to Austin. His sister Kashmira Cooke, the last living member of his immediate family, reportedly spent £3 million covertly buying his effects at a Sotheby’s auction instigated by Austin that raised £40 million.This year Freddie Mercury would have been 80. A fan club party is planned for the anniversary, in Montreux, where a statue of Mercury stand by the shore of Lake Geneva, with guests encouraged to “Come as Your Favourite Person fancy dress party” and dress according to the Queen frontman’s love of formal wear – tuxedos, cravats, “maybe even a monocle or face mask”. The singer owned a property in the Swiss town, now a museum dedicated to the band. In London’s Feltham, the humdrum dormitory town where his family moved in 1964 when he was 17 is also a memorial in Mercury’s life.From his earliest works before Queen was formed, right through to the end of his solo career, his notebooks and doodlings contain previously unpublished material including alternative lyrics and abandoned verses for “Bohemian Rhapsody” and multiple drafts of “Don’t Stop Me Now,” as well as entire songs that were never recorded.A Life in Lyrics is the definitive record of one of the greatest songwriters of all time, accompanied by stories, memories and anecdotes from his lifelong companion, and illustrated with photographs from Freddie’s personal collection, many of which have never been published before. 

A Life in Lyrics by Freddie Mercury with Mary Austin, Hugh Kermode (Reader), Harper Collins £30/ Dey Street Books $50, 320 pages.