Rare or previously unseen photos of Freddie Mercury from new book A Life In Lyrics – plus exclusive extract

“So was ‘Lily of the Valley’ really about me, as he’d said? Was it about his emerging sexuality? Neither, to my mind. It’s about him.” So recalls Freddie Mercury’s former fiancé Mary Austin in A Life In Lyrics, a new hardback book celebrating the Queen frontman’s life and music. Here, Attitude Uncut gets a sneak peak of an extract, written by Austin, alongside some gloriously intimate photos of one of the most handsome queer icons of all time…

LILY OF THE VALLEY

We were in a social setting, maybe a pub, because I recall that we were standing up, and someone – I’m thinking a studio engineer – asked Freddie if he’d ever written a song about me. To which his reply, after a long pause, was, ‘Yes, I suppose it’s “Lily of the Valley”.’ And that was it. Freddie offered no further explanation, I didn’t ask for one, and the conversation moved on – all of which was entirely in character for us both. As I’ve said, Freddie didn’t like to over explain things, particularly when they were personal, and never more so than when the questions were about his lyrics. It wasn’t that he was being evasive, more that he trusted his work to speak for itself, and he trusted others to take from it whatever they would. So the penny-dropping moment came when I eventually heard the album, read the lyrics printed on the sleeve and thought, ‘Lily of the Valley’. Oh, that’s the one supposedly about me . . .

For context, I should point out that Freddie and I had got engaged on Christmas Day, 1973. Me, twenty-two; him, twenty-seven. We woke up at Holland road, due for lunch with his family later that day, but deciding to exchange presents first. In our front room, Freddie handed me a large, square box and went to stand by the mantelpiece, watching as I began to unwrap it. When I tore away the paper, there was another box inside. It was so like him. He was always thoughtful when it came to presents. He liked choosing things carefully, and I knew he enjoyed the moment of giving as much as anything else. I opened the second box and found another, and then another still.

Each time I looked up, he was watching me closely. Finally, I reached a small jewellery box. When I opened it, inside was a silver ring, the scarab formed from different stones, set in a mosque-style band. It was beautiful. Freddie looked as nervous as I’d ever known him as he popped the question: will you marry me? We hadn’t talked about marriage. Even so, I didn’t need to think. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I will.’ And that was it – we were engaged. And yet ‘Lily of the Valley’, which I’m fairly sure was written shortly after we were engaged, was hardly Freddie’s paean of love to his intended. Instead, what comes through is a sense of conflict. It feels as if he’s wrestling with something.

Now, I don’t need to spell out what the conflict was. If you’re reading this, you already know. Suffice to say, lines like: I lie in wait with open eyes I carry on through stormy skies speak to that sense of struggle. His references to kings, serpents, Neptune, the Seven Seas – they all feel symbolic rather than literal.

Freddie was always drawn to mythology and abstraction, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he chose those images. They weren’t decorative. They were functional, a way of saying something without having to name it outright. Whether it’s the ‘serpent of the Nile’ or ‘my kingdom for a horse’, the language suggests a man trying to free himself from something he can’t quite put into plain terms.

To read this extract in full, check out Attitude Uncut: The Heat Issue, available to read now on Apple News+ and the Attitude app.

A Life in Lyrics by Freddie Mercury with Mary Austin (HarperCollins, £30) is out now. © Images courtesy of Mary Austin.

PLEASE NOTE THAT, REGARDING PERSONAL ARCHIVE IMAGES, WE’VE USED OUR BEST ENDEAVOURS TO CLEAR PERMISSION WHERE THE RIGHTS HOLDER CAN BE IDENTIFIED, BUT SOME PERSONAL PHOTOS HAVE BEEN INCLUDED WHERE WE HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO CLEAR COPYRIGHT. THESE PHOTOS HAVE BEEN SUPPLIED BY THE AUTHOR, BUT SHE HAS GIVEN NO WARRANTY AS TO OWNERSHIP OR COPYRIGHT.