My mother’s best advice: go in to bat for the ones you love

She wasn’t a great one for dispensing wisdom. Instead, she fought for me whenever I most needed it Mum was a brilliant non-giver of advice. Now Dad, he had his pearls. “If you do something, do it with a good heart.” It sounded platitudinous to me, but he had a point. And then there was his favourite: “If you think something bad about someone, say it up there [pointing to his head] but not out loud.” Dad was a good man, but that infuriated me. Mum played a bigger part in my life. She often had...

By Simon Hattenstone