Rather than ask her mum and dadima about the letters, Baby decides to go on a voyage of discovery to India, to visit her parents' homeland and see what she can uncover. She’s quick to jump in if she notices racism being directed to someone else like an “anti-racist superhero” but doesn’t stand up for herself – or didn’t until recently. Now a presenter and broadcaster for BBC’s Countryfile, The One Show and BBC Radio Four’s Women’s Hour, Rani’s first foot in the industry was Top of The Pops. Anita Rani is to be applauded for combining some really serious issues, which feel very much from the heart, with some fabulous characterisation and a strong sense of place which, combined with the humour that runs throughout make for an entertaining read. Baby is sparky and funny, as is the dialogue, and this delightful novel is threaded with humour, wit and comedy.

It was a gruelling journey and she uses this so well to take Baby there and leave her to delve into her own past.Sid also seemed remarkably silent about the atrocities that former neighbours visited upon each other during partition, or blamed the violence, murders, rapes, etc on the British for drawing an arbitrary line across India to form Pakistan - when the reason for partition was because the Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims in India could not agree on how an independent India would be run and violence was already escalating in many Indian cities. She would feel embarrassed about eating certain foods and wearing cultural clothing but as she gets older she starts to embrace who she really is wearing her Indian clothing with pride. Her words are elegant and powerful - they will resonate with women everywhere for generations to come. I think at some point, you wake up and realise it’s time to make myself happy, because I think women do look after everybody, whether that’s because that’s what society expects, or whether it’s your parents or your husband or your children. I am in awe of first of all her writing and beauty of her writing, and the pain she manages to express and the fact that her main character doesn’t speak.

First person narrative is not my favourite pov in general, and although the main character was 36, it felt like this was written for a younger audience. When Baby finds some love letters between her grandfather and a woman she knows nothing about and is clearly not her Dadima.There will come a time when people of colour in the UK can just produce art rather than having to spend all our creative energy on explaining who we are and why we have a right to exist. This book is beautifully written and engaging from the first page, keeping you guessing until the end.

I think it really ramped up from about [age] 25, but when you hit 30 it’s like, bloody hell, what’s going on? How did she manage to become the powerhouse she is, whilst battling against being too white inside her home and too brown outside of it? I think it's a generational issue where the older generation prefer not to talk about certain things or family issues that happened in the past but the newer generation are more inquisitive and want to learn more.

When Baby finds some love letters between her grandfather and someone who is very clearly not Baby's Nana, she needs to know more. She’s fed up with her job and her colleagues, her love life is permanently casual, and underpinning everything is the recent grief of losing her much-loved dad. The idea that Baby and Sid could track down the exact records, find (or not) the houses, the people, seemed unlikely to me. Anita Rani, best known as a BBC One Countryfile and Radio 4 Woman’s Hour presenter, will release her first fiction book, ‘Baby Does a Runner’ on July 6.

I found it slightly far-fetched that anyone would imagine finding so much out on a single trip to India with only a first name to go by - but this book gets better and better as the trip plays out and I found myself laughing, crying, laughing again, crying again. Baby is in her mid-thirties, stuck in a fairly mundane PR job in Manchester, in a situationship with a colleague, despite her mother’s attempts to encourage her to settle down. Important parts of her life came when she saw other people like her reflected in the Tara Arts theatre company and the seminal film, Meera Syal’s Bhaji on the Beach, and that’s why she’s determined to be seen and to have other people from different ethnic groups and other minorities in the UK represented.And then of course, underlying all of these feelings about race, racism, acceptance, and belonging, is the huge and at times overwhelming grief she carries within her, caused by the death of her father whom she loved dearly.