Janey and Me, Growing Up With My Mother by Virginia Ironside £16.99 (hardback) Fourth Estate Books
IS it every woman's fate to turn into her mother? Writer and journalist, Virginia Ironside still gets mistaken for hers, and she has been dead for years.
Her mother was Janey Ironside -- fashion professor, stylish, beautiful and, sadly, filled with self loathing.
Janey was born in India, with servants and doting parents. Her young world was shattered when she was sent to boarding school in England.
She married at a young age and her husband was dashing artist, Christopher Ironside -- Virginia's beloved father.
However, motherhood and "an eternity washing up" was not the life Janey wanted and took to dressmaking to fill the void.
Her fashionable eye soon catapulted her into the world of fashion and the media, leaving a very young Virginia in the care of a string of au pairs.
As a child she says she suffered acute loneliness.
Of course we know that Virginia Ironside became a hugely successful journalist and agony aunt but it's the moving memoir of her mother that adds the label of successful author to her name.
Karen Stephen
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