But the lasting damage to their marriage happens when Lindsay admits to having an affair with Howard Devoto, earlier of Buzzcocks, and by then (1979) Magazine.  From that point on, although there would be romantic reunions over many years, Tony’s letters reflect his disappointment as a Roman Catholic that his first marriage had failed.  He writes: “For the man whose woman loves another there is no redeeming feature in his life.”  “I bear much guilt for the failure of our marriage,” responds Lindsay, but it’s also worth remembering that Tony told Mick Middles in The Factory Story that Factory was perceived “as a bunch of sexually overactive Marxist lunatics…And it is true, it probably began with me and my first wife Lindsay because we were always shagging people to get back at each other”.  Lindsay would disagree with the first part of this statement – “absolute rubbish, not true at all” – but openly admits “to some of what Tony later referred to as ‘revenge fucking”.   Elsewhere in the book she describes Tony as a “self-confessed twat” and an “arrogant egomaniac” but, of course, there were serious external factors that undermined their marriage.

Although  A Continual Farewell focuses on the relationship between Lindsay and Tony against the backdrop of Factory’s formation and growth, it also gives valuable private and personal insights into the rise and fall of Joy Division and, in particular, the unfolding tragedy of Ian Curtis’ suicide.  Frankly, there’s precious little redemption here for anyone closely associated with Joy Division in the winter of 1979 and spring of 1980, particularly in the context of Ian Curtis’ complex personal life, his epilepsy and depression which led to a first suicide attempt that April.  Yes, it’s easy to be critical with hindsight and, of course, everyone involved was still young at the time, but Lindsay’s anger with Tony and with Factory is painful to read.  “I thought Factory had let Ian down…the machinery of the record company had put the promotion of Joy Division, with endless gigs, before Ian’s health when he was clearly not well.”  Following the suicide of May 1980, “I felt a deep disappointment that Tony, unlike me, appeared to carry no guilt over Ian’s death”.  Whether or not this was true – maybe Tony dealt with grief in a different way? – his letter to Lindsay of August 5^th 1980 speaks of “the loss of Ian, loss of our fidelity, loss of our home and the loss of a forseeable future together”.

But this is far from the end of their love story.  In July 1982 Tony writes “there will always be a corner of our souls in which we are forever husband and wife”.  In January 1983 his letter talks of “this seemingly undying flame” and  “I want to be your partner in life”, before persuading Lindsay to leave another relationship in London, and return to Manchester to take a job at Factory Records working in overseas licensing.  New Order were becoming successful internationally – ‘Blue Monday’ was released in March 1983 – and Lindsay also took over management of Factory’s jazz-funk-R&B band 52^nd Street.  (She’d later manage the early Stone Roses too.)

However, just when it seems as if there might be a positive resolution to the star-crossed lovers’ marriage, Tony files for divorce from Lindsay because “I wouldn’t sleep with him, I was adamantly remaining faithful to my London boyfriend whom he’d dragged me away from” .  Soon afterwards, Tony meets his second wife Hilary and gets her pregnant. Then, on December 5^th 1984, Tony sacked Lindsay from her job at Factory for “disobedience” and “violent and abusive” behaviour.  The legal letter states “you also attacked me verbally, though as your loving ex-husband, it is rather like water off a duck’s back”.   At the time, Lindsay’s legal aid lawyer – for an industrial tribunal – begged her to sue Tony for half his house and half of Factory’s assets as “the company had been built with our money during the time of our marriage”.  With hindsight, Lindsay writes, “If I had sued, Tony would have been the bitter one and we might never have made our peace.”

On the evidence of all these letters, love never tore them apart, despite this second marriage and young family; it would only be Tony’s early death in 2007 that could end this affair.  In 1988 Tony wrote to her again that “I love you – if not enough – at least as much as my heart can hold” – and their physical relationship would be rekindled on a trip to New York.  However, soon after the final letter in this collection, on December 9^th 1989 (“written with love and sent with love”) arriving some months after Lindsay had ended their affair, Tony met Yvette Livesey, the former Miss England and Miss UK, and he left his second wife Hilary and two kids for her.  Much later Lindsay reflects on how, in the ‘80s, “we slept together that decade with a passion…then in 2007 when his illness had aged him from 57 to 87, we chastely slept side by side in his loft apartment most weekends for the last three months of his life”.

In A Continual Farewell, Lindsay emerges as a long-suffering and very forgiving wife and lover, but she’s painfully honest about her own failings.  Her “Life In Letters” is a fine and often moving addition to an already heaving bookshelf about Manchester music, Factory Records, Joy Division/New Order and Anthony H Wilson.  Tony himself doesn’t emerge as the unblemished hero of Mike Garry’s poetic ode St Antony or as the self-promoting maverick of Twenty Four Hour Party People or Control, but this is a fascinating human portrait of a complex clever man; a major mover and shaker in British pop culture who is much missed and still celebrated in his hometown of Manchester.

Len Brown is a former music journalist and television producer.  He interviewed Tony Wilson several times for the NME and The Observer, and worked with Tony at Granada Television in the 1990s.  Len interviewed Lindsay Reade at her home near Macclesfield.  (With thanks to Tim Horrox.)

LB: Was Tony already a Manchester celebrity when you met him?

LR: People think he was well known back then but he wasn’t really.  He was only known in Manchester and he wasn’t very popular either.  A lot of people thought he was arrogant…according to Richard Madeley there were signs all over Manchester: “Tony Wilson is a twat”

Your book’s a collection of love letters, written by Tony to you over thirteen years.  Should readers be surprised to discover that he’s a great letter writer?

He’d studied English Literature at Cambridge, he was a clever guy.  When we first met we were both seeing other people. I finished with my old boyfriend immediately but Tony said his girlfriend was leaving for India soon and, while waiting until she did, he’d write me a letter every day in the meantime.  That’s how the letters started, and he was a great letter writer, he used a lot of literary references such as the metaphysical poet John Donne. And WB Yeats was one of his favourites so that’s how the title A Continual Farewell came about, taken from Yeats’ poem Ephemera.  I was gonna call it Nice Boys Were Never Your Cup Of Poison because Tony wrote that in his very last letter.  I thought that was spot on, he was quite right because he knew he wasn’t such a nice boy and that I wouldn’t be attracted to one who was.

It was a tempestuous, passionate relationship over many years, but it didn’t start well on the wedding day.  You write: “I made a big mistake by marrying this egotistical man”.

Nothing augured well on that day, there were loads of bad omens.  Firstly Tony went to visit the grave of his dear uncle who he was closer to than his own father, and right next to it was the grave of Lindsay Wilson, spelt exactly the way that my name would be spelt.  When we were leaving the church we had no confetti because there were two paths; the confetti throwers were on one path and we went down the other path. When we got into the car I said “we didn’t have any confetti, that means we won’t have any children”.  And he said, ‘You do talk shit”, but confetti is a symbol of fertility.  And we didn’t. Also my mother had made the wedding cake well in advance so the icing was rock hard and we couldn’t cut it, so Tony pushed me out of the way to do it.  I thought that was symbolic.  After the best man’s speech, which was a long biography of Tony’s life leaving me out of it, Tony leant across me to remark what a great speech this was.  I thought “I’ve made a mistake here, it’s all about him, and went off to the toilet to burst into tears.”.

Why did he want to set up a record company when he already had his broadcasting career at Granada Television in Manchester?

He had this programme called So It Goes, which was a music show, and that gave him a taste for it.  Punk started while he was doing it.  The first series had a load of Seventies stuff on it and then it finished with the Sex Pistols.  He was really excited from then on.  The second series featured more punk acts but then got cancelled because of Iggy Pop’s swearing.  Tony was obsessed by then, he had to carry on in some way…

The letters reveal a lack of trust and elements of betrayal within the marriage.  You became obsessed with Howard Devoto of Buzzcocks and Magazine, and Tony was infatuated with Debbie Harry of Blondie.  

I was dead insecure.  I was sure he was not being faithful or was about not to be.  I didn’t trust him that way.  The Blondie thing I thought would be alright because I was meeting him after the show, I thought he can’t go off with her.  But I think he took the marriage seriously being a Catholic, I think it really meant something to him. So perhaps I should have trusted him instead of damaging the trust by my own hand.

Through your own insecurity you had a relationship with Howard Devoto?  Is that where the marriage really breaks down?

My even greater mistake, probably, was telling Tony about it.  The thing with Howard didn’t last long, it was a kneejerk reaction as I was convinced Tony was having an affair. I loved Magazine and Howard fronting it and fell in love with him but it was all in my head, not real life (to quote his album title).

There’s bitterness in the book that you failed to get any credit for helping set up Factory Records.  You write that “Tony and I never had children but we did give birth to Factory” partly because Tony used your joint money to help set up Factory.

It was his money but we were married.  His mother had left him it but he asked my permission to spend it and I was all for it.  It wasn’t just the money, I was very involved with it in every way.  Like the first night at the Russell Club I was the DJ and I took Pete Shelley and Eric Random down to perform as the Tiller Boys.  I was very involved.  OMD, whose first single was FAC5, were signed because of me but then, when the rot set in, Tony went behind my back and got rid of them.

You were there when Factory Records started to take off and all those bands like Joy Division, the Durutti Column and A Certain Ratio started to become successful.  What are your memories of Joy Division at Strawberry Studios when ‘Unknown Pleasures’ was being created?

Tony and I were there a lot, mainly with Martin Hannett (the producer) for the mixing and with Chris Nagle who was engineering.  The band were either downstairs or weren’t there.  Martin didn’t like them being there, he kicked them out.  I became aware then that Martin was adding something to the music that had earlier been missing and it sounded much better to me. The band didn’t all agree which was no doubt another reason why Martin didn’t want them there. I’d already met Ian (Curtis) and knew him as a shy polite almost introverted person and yet when he performed, he was like a raving extrovert. I couldn’t believe it, it was most peculiar.   Surprising, compelling, all those things, but it did frighten me a bit, I felt frightened for him.   At that point, he hadn’t had an epileptic fit, that came later.  I always thought if you were epileptic you were born with it but you’re not necessarily.  You can get it through stress for instance.

It was a stressful time for you and Tony too.  Your marriage was strained, he had his TV career but Factory started taking up more and more of his time?  And then Ian Curtis came to stay with you.

Tony took on too much to keep our marriage going really.  He was mentally and physically largely absent.  I mean Ian stayed a whole week with me and Tony wasn’t even there, he was away on business.  The whole time it was just me and Ian, it was awful, a very dark time.  Ian had just made an attempt on his own life which is why I’d suggested he should come and stay with us.  I didn’t appreciate how depressed he was.  He just chain-smoked all the time, he hardly spoke and he barely moved, he was almost catatonic.

I still feel Factory let Ian down but I don’t blame anyone in particular.  When Ian died I blamed myself more than anyone, I was absolutely riddled with guilt.  It was terrible what happened because during that week with Ian, when Tony finally came home, I told Tony ‘it’s been terrible, I’m so depressed’ which I was.  I said ‘I’m close to suicide myself, you’ve just left us on our own, he’s not moved, he needs help, blah blah blah’.  Ian, I think, overheard some of this conversation and immediately decided he was leaving us.  He went to Bernard’s then (Bernard Sumner of Joy Division), and finally he went to his mother’s.

Can you explain the impact Ian Curtis’ death(May 1980) had on you and your marriage?

Not at all good.  Tony, unlike me, could see the myth making that would eventually happen.  He was perfectly right but to me it was the most terrible tragedy, and we should put Factory away now for a lengthy mourning period if not forever.  But he could see the myth.  Tony was even quoted later in some papers as saying the death of Ian Curtis was the best thing that ever happened to him…which he denied. Change the word ‘him’ to ‘Factory’ and there you could have some truth.

We went to visit Ian at the morgue and, when we walked in, I looked at him and said ‘God bless you’ and Tony said ‘you daft bugger’.  Our reactions were very different but I thought his was appropriate if somewhat blunt.

I turned against Factory at that point, I developed a hatred for what they stood for.   We had a wake for Ian and watched the film ‘The Great Rock & Roll Swindle’. I heard a line in it ‘No One Is innocent’. I looked around the room and thought ,“no,  no one is innocent”. We were just too young but no one was innocent.

The book explains how you decided to leave Tony, you moved to London and started a new relationship.  But Tony eventually persuaded you to come back? 

That happened later after Tony bought our next house without me seeing it. Tony worked and worked and worked on me, to get me away from London, and over time that broke up the relationship I had, so Tony won that.  He wanted me to go back with him but I wouldn’t sleep with him.  He began to think about divorce but I didn’t believe he would go through with it.  Even when he finally gave me the forms to sign I still didn’t believe him.  He still said if you want to come back as my wife you can do.

But why did you then decide to go and work with him at Factory Records?

Although staging rebellion, I still felt connected to Tony. Maybe I just needed more time. Also, I’d moved on by then from the upset over Ian and I needed a job. New Order were doing well  – ‘Power Corruption & Lies’ was a great album.  The job was running the overseas licensing, it was really interesting, I loved it.  I was working with musicians and I started managing 52^nd Street and enjoyed it.  New Order were taking off especially after they’d released ‘Blue Monday’.

Your role at Factory ended suddenly when Tony met the woman who’d be his second wife and she became pregnant.  That must have been such a difficult time for you? 

It didn’t end until after she gave birth although I felt threatened from then on. The day he sacked me was brutal. The only way they could get me was that I was swearing the day he sacked me, I got really volatile and emotional, well, you would wouldn’t you?   It made a return impossible.  But I knew it was unfair, his reasoning was spurious.  They all wanted to take my power away and I let them.   Tony’s famous catchphrase was ‘move on darling’.  But I didn’t want to move on, that was virtually all I had left.  In the chapter I give his case and I give my case. I leave it at the door of the reader to decide who was right and who was wrong.

What will surprise everyone who reads A Continual Farewell is that your love affair with Tony continued despite his subsequent relationships?

There was always a connection with us even though I didn’t speak to him for years after that.  The next time came about because we met occasionally at the Hacienda, I went there a lot in those early days. I don’t know when our affair began but we went to New York together.  Well, we didn’t actually sit together, he had a Club Class ticket and I had an economy ticket.  I was walking with him to board the plane and he whispered, “I don’t think you should be talking to me at the moment” And I started crying having spent 3 hours waiting alone due to the flight delay while he watched cricket in a posh lounge I didn’t know existed. He didn’t want us to be recognised because it was clandestine…in his head we were meeting by accident in New York.  When we got to the luggage carousel in New York he was like “oh you’re here too, would you like a lift?”  But after that it all became magical, we just fell in love again.  A long weekend in upstate New York by Lake George, we took ecstasy on the second night, and on Sunday we went to church and I was close to tears because it felt like we’d truly made our peace after all the upset.

By that point I wanted a child and Tony said he’d give me a child, but it didn’t feel right.  I didn’t want him to leave his wife, I didn’t want to break a family up.

The last letter in the book is from December 1989 but you maintained a close friendship with him until his death aged only 57 in 2007.  You were obviously heartbroken when he told you he was dying of cancer? 

Yes I’d imagined he was indestructible. In the final months I was with him every weekend, he was really going downhill fast.  He was so dignified in his death, I mean I fell in love with him again, again, because he handled it so beautifully.  I thought he was really brave, really dignified about it…he was upset and he was stressed but he was really strong the way he dealt with it.

At the start of the book, you write “Tony and Factory have haunted me for most of my life.”  Can you explain this? 

It’s like a shadow I can’t shake off.  You either want to engage with it or move on, but I’ve not been able to do either, because I’ve been pushed out of the story, I don’t get invited to things, but it’s always around you, as if this defines who you are.  This Factory thing, it does feel like a haunting. And Tony too.

Essential Listening:

’St Anthony: An Ode To Anthony H Wilson’ (Mike Garry & Joe Duddell)
Joy Division ’Transmission’
A Certain Ratio ‘Flight’
New Order ‘Age Of Consent’
Badly Drawn Boy ’Tony Wilson Said’
The Durutti Column ‘Brother’ (from ‘A Paean To Wilson’)
Happy Mondays ’Twenty Four Hour Party People’
The Durutti Column ‘I Get Along Without You Very Well’ (feat Lindsay Reade)
Cath Carroll ‘England Made Me’
James ‘Village Fire’

Additional Reading:

Mr Manchester & The Factory Girl: The Story of Tony & Lindsay Wilson (Lindsay Reade)
From Joy Division To New Order: The Factory Story (MIck Middles)
From Manchester With Love: The Life & Opinions of Tony Wilson (Paul Morley)
The Life of Ian Curtis: Torn Apart (Lindsay Reade & Mick Middles)
Tony Wilson: You’re Entitled To An Opinion (David Nolan)
I Thought I Heard You Speak: Women At Factory Records (Audrey Golden)
Factory: The Story Of The Record Label (Mick Middles)
The Hacienda: How Not To Run A Club (Peter Hook)
The North Will Rise Again: Manchester Music City 1977-1996 (John Robb)