“I’m afraid the suntan oil we’ve been using can’t be much good because we are still not very brown.”

Mum in Ireland (yes, Ireland!), 1961

After my dad died in 2010, my sister was clearing out his house – the house we grew up in – and found a small suitcase in the loft.

The case was full of stuff that Mum, who died in 1999, had saved, but had never mentioned. Letters, cards, postcards, photos, programmes from shows, even things like dry cleaning receipts from when she lived in America in t…