[3] His uncle was Anthony John Mundella, a Liberal statesman and a member of William Ewart Gladstone's Cabinet.

[6] Mundella's upbringing was Unitarian[7] and his family was politically Liberal with a strong leaning amongst his surviving siblings towards education and its reform.

[8] Mundella's early education was at the non-sectarian school attached to the Unitarian High Pavement Chapel in Nottingham.

[10][11] In 1887 he was awarded BSc with honours in Physics and appointed a Pemberton Fellow of the University of Durham in 1887, worth over £100 a year, which supported him while he was at St John's College, Cambridge from 1888 to 1891.

The college was established to provide advanced instruction for the engineering, shipbuilding, mining and building industries on Wearside.

[18][20] Mundella was immediately able and eager to build on the foundations established by his predecessor, stressing the ideal of a liberal and comprehensive education for artisans.

The concept of educational progression was already in place by 1910, when Mundella ensured evening classes were re-structured to allow specialist study after two preliminary years.

Most successfully, in 1921 he established a Pharmaceutical Department which resulted in the College being recognised geographically as the only institution between the long-established Universities of Leeds and Edinburgh with facilities for Pharmacy degree courses.

[24] In 1917, during World War I, Mundella was appointed by the Ministry of Reconstruction to a number of committees deliberating and advising on post-war improvements, with particular involvement in the sphere of technical education.

He was a practising Liberal Nonconformist, being a pacifist in his younger years (and as an independent adherent being present with Laura Dunn at the 17th Universal Peace Congress held in London in 1908)[26] and later, with his wife, an active member of the League of Nations Union.

He was a pianist of note, and was said to be a finer player of the instrument than his elder sister Emma Mundella, who was a professional musician and composer, but he played only socially and for his own enjoyment.