A detailed account of Laura's life and premature death, this book is also a semi-fictionalised story of the relationship between a father and daughter and their reflections on life.

It details the searing horror of her illness, treatment and its devastating impact on her family – but also shows how hope lies in the bleakest situations.

Inspired by the poetic work of Dylan Thomas and Virginia Woolf, the book’s tone is set in the prologue by drawing the reader into a seemingly dark wood near the children’s hospice which is actually filled with life and pools of light.

Mr Moore said: “After Laura died I didn’t dream about her, like other people did.

“But there was a day in the churchyard in March when snow started to fall and settle all around. And I had a feeling Laura was there and it comforting."

With this moment in mind, towards the end of the book Mr Moore meets Laura as a ‘mellow and mature’ young woman and she urges him to carry on his good work in her name.

For Laura’s legacy is an amazing one – when she died of leukaemia in 1989 the grief of Mr Moore and his wife Gail was matched by a powerful drive to help terminally ill youngsters and support families who had lost children.

When Laura first fell ill in 1987 Mr Moore founded COPE to build a children’s cancer ward in the Leicester Royal Infirmary and his wife organised a community fundraising drive.

After her death they channelled their energy into good causes establishing the Laura Centre – a counselling service for those affected by the death of a child – and later the Rainbows Children’s Hospice in Loughborough.

A twice published author, Mr Moore started to write A Lark Ascending three months after Laura passed away, prompted by his experience in the village churchyard

The book begins just before a family holiday to Sweden, but this normality is torn apart by a graphic account of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion in Ukraine.

Mr Moore believes the radioactive explosion may have triggered off Laura’s illness and the chapter ends with an ominous image of fallout settling in the lakes of Sweden.

In this episode he imagines hundreds of bewildered children staring at the billowing mushroom cloud and inhaling certain death as soldiers in masks set up cordons.

This not only gives a sense of the horror facing Laura and her family – it evokes the aching compassion and pity that would drive the Moores to raise millions of pounds to improve the short lives of terminally ill children.

Mr Moore said: “When Laura died I wrote a diary of her life.