Before the Second World War, Lillian Beckwith's father ran a small grocer's shop in a Cheshire town. It was typical of so many corner shops - the shops that are now more and more becoming just a memory, overwhelmed by the march of the supermarket. The corner shop where customers were known, often friends, not just faces at a checkout point, where shopping was gossipy, unhurried. A shop full of remembered smells of childhood: soft soap, aniseed balls, bacon and tea. A shop that is brought to life by the acute, affectionate memories of the little girl who grew up in it.

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