Mum's surprise at becoming cover star

As they relaxed on the pebbles, they found themselves thrust into the limelight by a photographer from The Argus.

The picture appeared in the paper the next day and the family cut it out as a keepsake of their moment of fame and then forgot about it.

Then 40 years later, the women were stunned to see themselves in a starring role on the front of a new book.

Doreen Robinson, her daughter Caroline and her mother Nellie Kite, get top billing in Brighton Remembered, which records the last century in pictures from the archives of The Argus.

Doreen, of Crabtree Avenue, Brighton, was 24 when the photograph was taken on June 26, 1962.

She spotted the picture again in The Argus earlier this month in a report about the new book.

She said: "I was so surprised to see it again 40 years later and then find out we were in the book too. I recognised us straight away.

"I can remember the occasion quite well because it's not every day you get your photograph in the newspaper.

"Caroline was just a year old - she's 41 now - and my Mum was giving her something to eat.

"My mother died five years ago but she would have loved to have been in a book."

The family's moment of fame came when the photographer went to the beach to take pictures of windbreaks, which had just been introduced.

He asked Doreen and her family to be his models.

Doreen said: "Mums didn't work when their children were small in those days so we would go to the beach quite often.

"It could be blowy so we were glad windbreaks were brought in.

"That day we had just settled down on Dalton's beach to the left of the Palace Pier, when the photographer came over to take our picture.

"I was wearing a black swimming costume which was the height of fashion in its day, so I was quite happy to have my picture taken.

"It's lovely to see it again, especially as part of a record of the city. It has brought back lots of happy memories."

thisisbrightonandhove.co.uk/book/