My mother Maureen Buckley Shaw was born in India during the hey-day of British colonialism. My no-nonsense, "where there's muck there's brass" grandfather obliged her to return to England to be educated: she swapped sunshine, warmth and a leisured home environment for the gloomy ginnels of Hollinwood in the shadows of the dark Satanic (cotton) mills of Oldham. War stopped her going to University. She was instead sent by the Chemical Inspectorate to check explosives and trigger mechanisms at Risley Royal Ordnance Factory....and to meet my father. The two things were not dissimilar. Her mother...