Life is full of valuable lessons, yet none more so than those passed from parent to child. The time to fly the nest comes around quickly, and some of those lessons may come in handy. This book captures all of these intentions, from practical lessons on how to make a bed, how to iron a shirt and how to rent your first flat to personal advice on the perfect handshake and making small talk. These are the lessons that would have been passed on had there been a few more hours in the day.

Polly Powell is a book publisher who decided to write this book for her two children as they faced the prospect of moving out of home and into student digs at university. Wracked with motherly guilt about all the things she hadn't managed to tell them, she embarked on identifying and explaining the 50 most important life-skills that had somehow slipped through the net. She lives in hope of seeing the perfectly ironed shirt.