MICHELE Hanson's bittersweet columns in The Guardian have chronicled the ups and downs of living with her spirited but increasingly infirm mother and her teenage daughter.

Brought up in Barrow, Michele's parents moved to the south of England. After the death of her father on a hospital trolley, Michele brought her ageing mother to her home in London and the interaction between the three feisty females became the stuff of the columns, which were subsequently published as a book.

Michele read excerpts from the book - Living with Mother, published by Virago - and talked with the audience about how she had coped. Her sense of humour never left her - although her patience was sorely tried by her family's antics.

Speaking with emotional candour Michele told it like it was - a nixture of anguish and hope, tragedy and comedy.

A lunchtime gem.

Review by Ann Clarke