If you could ask your mother just ONE question, what would it be?

That’s the idea behind a bestseller – so we asked six star Femail writers to put their own mums in the hot seat

DO YOU know what band your mother loved as a teenager? Her favourite childhood games? Or with whom she shared her first kiss? The answer is probably ‘No’, which is why the journal Mum, Tell Me — which helps prompt and record these special memories, dreams and wishes — has become a global bestseller. Here we’ve asked six writer daughters to ask their mothers one burning question . . .

What did you do after school?

Kitty Dimbleby, 39, a mother of two from bath, and her mum bel mooney, 72.

BEL: On weekdays, as a teenager, I’d walk slowly home from my girls’ grammar school with a friend and we’d stop at the sweet shop to buy a bar of Cadbury’s Bourneville to share. We’d sit on a wall at the end of my road and gossip, waiting for her bus to the next town.

Then I’d let myself into our semi with my key and wait for my parents to return from work. I’d read, draw or sew. In winter, I’d put a match to the coal fire already laid, because the house was so cold.

After tea, I would avoid helping with the washing up by going to my bedroom to do my homework.

On the floor was my Dansette record player, so I might play The Beatles or Bob Dylan, but not if I was wrestling with Latin. On a Friday night — no homework (saved for Sunday) — I’d get dressed up to bicycle to my youth club and chat to boys. Or — later — hang out with my boyfriend over the road.

KITTY: I love this insight into Mum’s life — it’s such a different teenage experience from mine and the one I know my daughter will live. No TV, no social media — it sounds rather wonderful.

The idea of spending an evening sewing is alien to me, but I know it shaped the woman Mum is today: she still mends her own clothing, rather than buy something new.

The idea of her cycling makes me chuckle because I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her on a bike, but I can picture her with her hair flying out behind her, young and free. Not just my mum, my children’s grandmother, but Bel, with her whole life in front of her.

What event shaped your childhood?

Rosie Millard obe, 53, is chair of BBC charity Children in Need. Her mother Rosemary millard 88, is a retired doctor.

ROSEMARY: When I was eight, I was evacuated to Canada on The Empress of Britain, a liner which had been taken over as a troop ship. We left Southampton on September 1, 1939, just days before war was declared.

I travelled with my nanny and was seen off by my father and one of my two sisters. My sisters and brother were much older than me so they stayed in England.

My mother couldn’t face saying goodbye to me. When my dad came home afterwards, my mother said he looked ten years older. But we all thought I was only going away for a few months.

I stayed with family friends in Toronto. I wasn’t homesick. I never cried. When I was bullied a bit at my Canadian school, I was just told to toughen up and get on with it.

I couldn’t speak to my parents on the phone, but I got letters every week from them both.

After five years I was told a boat home would be available in a week. It was too sudden. I loved Canada — I was 14 and had a Canadian accent. I didn’t have time to say goodbye to everyone. It was very hard.

My father was there to meet me at the station when I arrived. He looked so old. We had been a very close family, but being in Canada for five years meant there was always that gap.

I got used to it but making close relationships through the rest of my life was harder. I think I had learned to manage on my own.

ROSIE: I knew my mother had been evacuated to Canada, of course, but it wasn’t until we spoke about it that I realised how much it must have thrown her on her resources. A child of eight, sent across the world and having to cope on her own.

She couldn’t make a fuss because the whole world was in turmoil and trauma. Her brother was in a prisoner of war camp and one of her sisters had lost her husband.

I couldn’t imagine the pain of having to send one of my own beloved children away particularly at a time of such danger and jeopardy. The experience was clearly life-changing.

What was hardest about being a mother?

MARINA Fogle, 40, mum of two, author and broadcaster of the Parent Hood podcast, lives in West london. Her mother, monika Hunt, 70, has three children. MONIKA: Sending you to boarding school, aged 11, was really challenging. Gosh, even thinking about it now makes me want to start crying all over again. I used to peel you out of my arms and leave you sobbing, running after the car.

I felt so guilty, racked with worry that I was doing the wrong thing leaving you there when you were so sad. I’d turn out of the school gates and immediately pull into the layby to sob — I didn’t want to show you how upset I was but as soon as I could let go, I would.

That worry, a nagging feeling that my daughter was unhappy, stayed with me all the time and I’d worry about you constantly.

We’d call once a week and that phone call would always end in tears. Daddy and I would write every day.

I had endless talks with my grandmother — funnily enough not Daddy — asking if I really was doing the right thing.

But Granny encouraged me to give you a chance to enjoy it and eventually you did, you were happy and made so many friends.

In hindsight I see the benefits you got from boarding school and I’m so glad we persisted. I know now that I was spared the conflict. I saw it with all my friends who had teenagers at home — there was this continuous warfare because the parents and children didn’t see eye to eye.

We really looked forward to when you were home, and made the most of it — we certainly didn’t fight.

MARINA: I thought Mother would grumble about how helping us with our homework was a struggle — as an Austrian, much of our English education was baffling for her. But her answer made me quite tearful.

Boarding school was indeed hard for me. I suffered crippling homesickness, not because I was unhappy at school but because it wasn’t nearly as good as home.

I remember becoming a massive hypochondriac, visiting the indomitable Sister Hill for a range of made up illnesses. When I look back, what I craved was attention; while there were plenty of people to look after me, there was no one who loved me.

Part of me knew I loved school, I wasn’t asking to leave. I just found those goodbyes extremely hard and I’d spend days dreading them.

My mother never showed me how upset she was, probably because, selflessly, she knew this would only make the whole process harder.

I’m not sure I could do what she did, leave my daughter sobbing for nigh on three years. But she trusted her instinct that it was right for me.

Looking back on those early years of boarding school, I realise how strong my mother was and just how fiercely she wanted the best for me.

Who influenced you the most in your life?

FRANCES HARDY, 61, lives in West sussex. Her mum, Jane, Hardy, 92, is a retired school teacher, who lives in North Wales.

JANE: My mum and dad were wonderfully kind and welcoming. Mum was always rustling up meals for droves of visitors: as well as friends and neighbours, there were the lonely, the dispossessed; the old.

Just before the war, three Austrian Jewish refugees, Ernst, Adele and Karl, who had escaped from Hitler’s persecution, came to live with us in our house in London — I can’t imagine, looking back, how they squashed in with our family of five.

I still remember the tears streaming down Karl’s face every time he heard the song Vienna, City Of My Dreams on the wireless.

As a little girl, aged ten or so, I tried to follow my parents’ example.

When they came home from shopping one day, an old beggar was

installed in the sitting room drinking tea from their best china.

Vagrants and hawkers called door-to-door then, and I’d invited him in because I was sure that it was what my parents would have done.

If they were horrified they didn’t let on. In fact, my dad told the story of the little girl and the tramp to his Sunday school class the next week. I listened, rapt, not realising it was about me. FRANCES: I never met my grandad, Frank — he died long before I was born, and relatively young, at 40, when Mum was 13 — but I knew she adored him; so much so that I was named after him.

This story explains Mum’s belief that everyone, whatever their status in life, deserves equal kindness.

When I was little, I remember coming home from school and finding a very weather-beaten old woman, a traveller — who’d called selling pegs and lucky heather — drinking tea in our kitchen.

It bemused me that she’d poured the tea into the saucer and was sipping it from that. (Mum told me to ‘shhhh’ when I asked her why, and introduced us formally.) It all adds up now. Mum was just following her parents’ example and perpetuating a legacy of kindness.

It’s made me feel that I should try harder to be like her.

What’s the happiest memory of my youth?

Bel Mooney, 72, a mother of two, lives near Bath, and her mum Gladys Mooney, 94, a mother of two, lives in Bath.

GLADYS: You’d gone away to university and I missed you. I remember when Dad and I left you at the start of term, I cried all the way home. Anyway, in the middle of term I took a day off work and came up to see you.

You met me at Paddington station, and first I wanted to see University College London. You showed me the refectory, then we sat on the steps under the beautiful portico with pillars and I felt so proud to see where you were studying. That my daughter was there. Then we went shopping to Oxford Street. I remember I was wearing a beige suede coat — you dressed up to go to London in those days.

Then you took me to Biba — which was all dark, very special. I would have bought you something, but I can’t remember what. We had a lovely day and I know that I laughed a lot. BEL: I feel very touched as well as surprised by Mum’s memory from 1966. That this is the very first thing that popped into her mind shows just how much it meant to her. Born in 1924, she left school before her 15th birthday, worked hard all her life — and always drummed into me that education was vital. She bought me books and clothes and I did my homework. A fair bargain! I remember that day in London. Her pride moves me greatly; I’d forgotten how impressive UCL must have seemed to her. And I remember what she bought me: a green, ‘elephantcord’ trouser suit with a longline jacket which I loved and wore with a plum turtle-neck jumper. I made a lot of my clothes, so shopping with Mum was a huge treat; she had good taste and liked to spoil me. Our giggles from that day echo down the years and make me cry.

MuM, Tell Me by elma van Vliet (Particular Books, £16.99). To order a copy for £13.59 (20 per cent discount) visit mailshop. co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640, p&p free on orders over £15. spend £30 on books and get FRee premium delivery. offer valid until april 4.