Mamma is the widowed Joanna Malling, forty-one years of age and still young in looks and heart. (But not on the book jacket. She's wearing a headscarf and looks about 70.)

I nearly fell over when I read that on the inside cover. 41? I think that was the year I went skinnydipping in Bolivia on my hols. Thank heavens I wasn't 41 in 1956 when Mamma was published.

I so loved Guard Your Daughters - and I see I'm not the only one who thinks it's better than I Capture the Castle -  that I placed an order for Diana Tutton's other novel at the library. It emerged from the depths this afternoon, apparently having survived an accident with a cup of cocoa. (Or Horlicks. It's clearly time I gave up gin and took to Horlicks. Or Complan.)

I haven't started it yet. I'm hoping it won't be over-stimulating. At my age.

Well, I have romped through Mamma in onr sitting, and it turned out to be undemanding, mildly enjoyable and completely forgettable, like an old-fashioned woman's magazine serial. There's no way I'd read its modern equivalent but I'm a sucker for cocoa stains/trouble with the char/proper afternoon tea (rather than my own distinctly common habit of an IV-drip of Yorkshire Brew from the time I get up until I go to bed). The ageing 41-year-old mother develops a feeble crush on her daughter's husband who is 36 but politely calls her Mamma because she's clearly far too old to call by her Christian name.  Nothing happens. Except a lot of flower-arranging and cups of tea. It could have been written by Monica Dickens. Some forgotten novels/authors are forgotten for perfectly good reasons. But do read Guard Your Daughters which is a cut above this one.