Given her dreadful start in life, seen as nothing but a nuisance by her parents, it is amazing that Claire Rayner should become such a caring and compassionate figurehead, with her 'agony aunt' column known to millions of readers, Philippa Logan writes.

Or perhaps it is not so amazing that a delight in caring can come from such an absence of care and happiness. Claire's childhood does seem almost unbearably miserable, with its unpromising start in the East End of London.

Her mother saw her as a problem from her earliest days, and treated her abysmally; her father was always on the run, forcing his family to change addresses and even their names.

At 14, able to bear home life no longer, Claire took up a nursing job at Epsom Cottage Hospital, pretending to be 17. There she learnt the skills of nursing, and also found her vocation. But her parents had not lost their hold on her, and, when they emigrated to Canada, sent her a ticket to join them. True to form, when she became ill with an overactive thyroid and spent 15 months in hospital, they never once came to see her, and they were relieved when she was sent back to London where there were no medical bills, thanks to the NHS. And Claire was delighted, for now she really was free of her parents, and here her life started to take off.

She resumed her nursing, and met the love of her life, Desmond Rayner, whom she married in 1957. It was when Claire was at home with her first baby that she discovered her talent for journalism, and expanded her freelance work writing articles for medical, nursing and baby magazines. Radio and television work cropped up too; she wrote romantic novels and advice books, and then, just before her third child, Jay, was born, began to write for Woman's Own, where she stayed for over 22 years, sometimes receiving a thousand letters a week, which she was conscientious about replying to.

All the medical advice she has given is based on her own long experience in nursing, and much of the personal advice she has dispensed comes from the heart, from her own awful experiences in childhood.

Through a robust spirit, a passionate cause, and the eventual support of those around her (excluding her parents). The journey from there to here has many stops along the way, is never boring or mundane, and is thoroughly worth reading.