I had never really heard of Mary Ann Hunn, and I'm glad I was able to read this one. It was a well researched read and was interesting.

There were some interesting parts to this book. However, it felt much drawn out. I would have enjoyed it more if it was shorter.

Perfectly competent and adequate biography of Mary Ann Costello and her rather less interesting son George Canning, who was briefly Prime Minister. Mary Ann led an unconventional, and by the standards of the time, unrespectable life, and George spent most of his own life trying to come to terms with his mother’s past, attempting but usually failing to reconcile filial duty with filial affection. Based largely on Mary Ann’s own account of her life and a treasure trove of family letters, the book was certainly exhaustive in its research but also somewhat exhausting to read. It certainly tested my reading stamina. A slightly abridged version would have made for a better book – but I guess when you’ve done all that research you feel compelled to share it.

My thanks to the publishers for an advanced review copy of this book, which is about Mary Ann Costello, also known as Mary Ann Hunn, who became the mother of George Canning, a very short lived Tory prime minister of this country.

Mary Ann was born to a dysfunctional Irish family in the mid eighteenth century and, due to the quixotic activities of her feckless father, the family came to see themselves as dependent on her marriage prospects.

A pretty, bright girl, she rejected a string of wealthy suitors and fell in love with a disinherited poet, George Canning, father of the future prime minister, who left her a widow with 2 surviving sons and in need of a job.

The famous actor, Garrick, is temporarily blinded to her inexperience and limited talent but he recovers his judgment after her initial West End season. There is no way back for her, though, and she toils through years of provincial seasons, sustained by her notable resilience and a magnificently theatrical temperament. She sees off a range of useless men, whom she marries or lives with, dropping infants off with family and wet nurses up and down the country. She is a great survivor. She is booed and hissed off the stage in Bristol. A barn theatre collapses in Bury. A flu epidemic rages in Lancaster. One husband goes mad; another deserts her. Mary Ann comes through it all and ends her days, after an interlude of many years selling a patent eye medicine, as an elderly gossip on the fringes of Bath society. Throughout she is devoted to her first born son, George.

He, however, was brought up by an uncle, having been taken from her by the Canning family because she went on stage. To start with he misses her, but as he grows up, he adopts the hysterical and hypocritical outrage of his age and he spends his life both manipulating his mother’s life to keep her away from his burgeoning if unprincipled career and supporting her and many of his half siblings as best he can.

The book is based upon a 65,000 word account of Mary Ann’s life, which she wrote in 1803 to justify how she has lived to her son, along with 2000 or so letters, which George wrote to his mother between 1780 and her death in 1827. He died only 6 months later.

The author does his best to imagine his way into the lives of the protagonists in this exhausting story, but a lot of what he writes is pure speculation and this has made the book far too long in my opinion. I’m afraid I was mainly relieved to finish it.

Well, I think this woman’s biography is much more interesting than that of her son! Such great source material has led to a work of considerable detail and honesty. Her life story is interesting in itself but when you factor in the life story of her son, it adds a fascinating new perspective. Well written, carefully researched, this is an enjoyable book.