From the moment she came into the world - two weeks early, throwing her parents’ lives into disarray - Mary has gracefully but firmly done things her way.

A love affair with cookery in her teens became a full-time career as one of our most prolific and best-loved cookery writers, and at nearly eighty a TV sensation on the Great British Bake Off.

But as a working mother, at the heart of a busy household, Mary was also a woman ahead of her time- attempting to do and have it all. Hers is a life lived to the full, with its share of tragedy and joy. Above all, it is the inspiring story of a delightfully traditional but thoroughly modern woman.