Tony Robinson, whose mother had dementia, contributed:

"I've always wanted a big tree. We acquired a place in Spain, and I bought a Washingtonia Palm Tree, but it was too big to go through the front gates. So we hired an enormous crane, and it lifted the tree high in the air and down into a hole we'd dug for it.

"We had already named it George before we knew it was a Washingtonia. He's still alive and thriving and sometimes we sing to him."

Tony Benn’s political views were moulded by one particular memory:

"In 1983, I visited Hiroshima and was shown round by a guide who pointed out a dark mark on the pavement and said it was where a child had been sitting when the atomic bomb was dropped in August 1945.

"The child had been vaporized and next to it was the child’s twisted metal lunch box that had been contorted by the heat of the bomb and that was all that was left to remind us of what had happened.

"I shall never forget that moment and that is why I am totally opposed to the possession and use of nuclear weapons."

Former Strictly... star Arlene Phillips recalled her experience with her father’s dementia:

"My father moved in succession from his own flat in London (when he began to forget where he lived), to a residential home also in London, who found he needed nursing facilities, on to a nursing home in Leeds who took great care of him.

"I tried to visit every week, but my sister who lived very close visited him daily. His love in life was books and scouring the Guardian inch by inch, but gradually he lost interest and found it difficult, so my sister and I read to him, but he lost interest in that, it was as if his agile mind could no longer make sense of the words. Week by week he struggled to remember words, names, even mine.

"Wednesday was my visiting day and I planned my visit even though I was leaving the next day for Chicago. At the last minute I decided not to go to Leeds, I was only going to be away for a week, I'd see him when I got back. I left to rehearse my show in Chicago. He died just after I arrived. I have never forgiven myself."

Other contributions have come from maverick politicians Lembit Opik and Ian Gibson, TV presenter Fern Britton, children’s TV star Floella Benjamin, award-winning actor Timothy West and many more.

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