Updated

Updated · The Guardian · Sep 1

Mary Austin Publishes Freddie Mercury Lyrics Book as She Sells £30 Million Garden Lodge

Updated

Updated · The Guardian · Sep 1

Mary Austin Publishes Freddie Mercury Lyrics Book as She Sells £30 Million Garden Lodge

Q: Why did the woman Freddie Mercury trusted most finally decide to sell his £30 million mansion and reveal his private archives?

Mary Austin says she acted because nearly 35 years after Freddie Mercury’s death she was finally ready to stop living inside the grief and responsibility he left her. She has described Garden Lodge, the London mansion he left her, and the sealed trunks of handwritten lyrics and papers as emotionally overwhelming rather than simply valuable possessions. For decades, she kept the house and archives private because opening them felt like a betrayal of Mercury’s trust and because the material was too painful to confront. The trunks sat unopened in her attic until 2022, when she began sorting through them and found original drafts of songs such as “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “We Are the Champions.” That process, she has said, made clear how much her own life had been frozen by his death, the inheritance and years of silence. Austin’s decision to sell the £30 million house and reveal the archives was therefore both personal and practical. She says she wants to move on, rather than remain the lifelong custodian of Garden Lodge, and she does not want to leave the house and Mercury’s possessions as a burden for her children. She also argues that sharing the material is a way of preserving Mercury’s legacy, not exploiting it. By working on the book Freddie Mercury: A Life in Lyrics and with auction house Sotheby’s, she says she wanted fans and future generations to see his creative process and private papers instead of leaving them hidden away indefinitely.

Q: What hidden secrets about Freddie Mercury's greatest hits were locked away in four silver trunks for over forty years?

The “hidden secrets” were not scandalous revelations so much as Freddie Mercury’s private creative record: original handwritten lyric sheets, early drafts, annotations and doodles for some of Queen’s biggest songs, locked in four silver trunks in Mary Austin’s attic for nearly 40 years. Austin says the trunks contained Mercury’s original lyrics for “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Don’t Stop Me Now,” “Killer Queen” and “We Are the Champions,” among other songs. What makes them important is that they show his writing process in his own hand — how lines were shaped, revised and preserved before the songs became global hits. The material also offers a rare, direct glimpse of Mercury as a songwriter rather than just a performer. Through the pages, Austin has said, fans can see “Freddie Bulsara” — the private, intensely focused artist behind the public persona of Freddie Mercury. The archive includes not only lyric pages but also personal photographs and notes that help place the songs in the context of his life and relationships. Those trunks remained unopened because Austin found them too painful to face after Mercury’s death in 1991. She finally began sorting them in 2022, later deciding to publish selections in Freddie Mercury: A Life in Lyrics and to work with Sotheby’s so the material could be preserved and shared. In effect, what had been locked away was Mercury’s unseen working archive — the handwritten DNA of some of rock’s most famous songs.

3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Sep 1

Mary Austin, 75, is publishing “Freddie Mercury: A Life in Lyrics,” built around handwritten drafts she found in silver trunks nearly 40 years after packing them away.
The book pairs original lyrics to songs including “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “We Are the Champions” with Austin’s recollections, after she initially found the material too painful to examine herself.
Austin said the project is part of closing a long chapter tied to Mercury, whose estate share she inherited along with Garden Lodge, now listed for £30 million after a 2023 Sotheby’s sale raised £40 million.
She defended selling Mercury’s possessions as a way to spare her sons the burden of managing them, while acknowledging criticism from fans and strain with Mercury’s family over his ashes and auctioned mementoes.
The interview offers one of Austin’s rare public accounts of her bond with Mercury—from partner and confidante to executor of his wishes—as she says it is finally time to move on.