I was on the cusp of a generation where you simply did not ask such things of your elders. Children were seen and not heard. My parents were born in the 1940s and I had a traditional upbringing. I would never have dared ask my grandfather anything of the sort. Instead, I would sit quietly and listen intently as he spoke with the adults, telling stories of what was happening in England and describing his journey by plane, which, growing up in Australia, seemed nothing short of extraordinary.
My father remembers things, but hit-and-miss a detail here, a fragment there. My great-grandmother died when I was two, if I ever met her at all.
That lost opportunity is something I suspect many of us share, and it is what makes the stories that do survive so extraordinarily precious.
It was a client's project that brought all of this into sharp focus for me.
She had shared her late father's memory book; a handwritten account of his childhood in the north of England in the 1930s. He had written it towards the end of his life, and it was extraordinary. He described his neighbourhood, his family, the street he grew up on, the sounds and smells of a world that no longer exists. It was vivid, detailed, and utterly irreplaceable - The kind of document that no archive in the world could ever hold.
Around the same time, a friend shared something similar. His own father's memoir, written in old age. Both men were born in the same era, but their lives could not have been more different. One grew up in a comfortable, settled family; the other lost his father at the age of four and knew real hardship. Both stories were equally fascinating. Both were equally important.
Reading them made me pick up the phone and call my own father.
Before You Begin
Before you sit down with your relative, it is worth asking yourself one question: what do you want to capture?
You might want to focus on a specific period or topic; their childhood, their working life, a particular family story you have always wanted to understand better, or perhaps you might want to record a whole life memoir, from their earliest memories to the present day.
If it is the latter, be realistic. A whole life cannot be captured in a single afternoon. Older people tire more easily than we sometimes remember, and a long or intense session can feel overwhelming or worse, become something they begin to dread. Far better to plan several shorter conversations, each with a loose focus, than to attempt everything at once and risk the whole endeavour grinding to a halt.
Think of it less as an interview and more as a conversation. Your role is not to interrogate, but to listen and create the space in which memories can surface naturally and in their own time.
Where to Start
If you are starting from the beginning and want to capture a whole life memoir, the simplest approach is also the most effective. Start with the basics and let the conversation open up naturally from there.
When and where were you born? is often all it takes to get someone talking. But if the answers are short, gentle follow-up questions can unlock so much more:
- Where did your family live when you were born?
- Where did you grow up?
- What do you remember about the house or the neighbourhood?
- What did your father do for work?
- Did you have brothers and sisters? What were they like?
- Where did you go to school?
- What did you do after school? Did you play outside, did you have chores?
- What are your earliest memories?
The key is not to rush. One question, asked with genuine interest, can open a door to an entire world. Follow the thread wherever it leads. The most unexpected details - a neighbour's name, a particular smell, a journey taken - are often the most vivid and the most valuable.
It's a Conversation, Not an Interview
It helps to remind your relative of this at the outset. The word "interview" can feel formal and intimidating, whereas a conversation feels natural, safe, and without pressure. Tell them that is exactly what it is.
As the conversation moves through the different periods of their life, revisit similar themes at each stage. Childhood questions give way to questions about youth, courtship, work, marriage, parenthood. Where did you meet your husband? What did your parents think of him? Where did you go on your first date?
And always, always reach for the day to day details, not just the facts and figures. Facts and figures can be found in records. What cannot be found anywhere is the story of the young man who turned up on a first date clutching a red rose for her mother, not for her. The lullaby a mother sang at bedtime. The four sisters sharing one bed while the three brothers shared another, all in a single room of a two bedroom house, with the babies in with Mum and Dad.
Those are the details that no census record, no birth certificate, no archive in the world will ever capture. That is the good stuff. That is what makes a family history come alive, not as a collection of names and dates, but as the story of real people, living real lives, in a world very different from our own.
It is also worth remembering that the world our ancestors lived in was profoundly different from our own. Standards of living, social expectations, and moral frameworks were shaped by entirely different circumstances. It is not our place to judge the past by the standards of the present. Our role is to understand, not to condemn.
It is worth approaching these conversations with sensitivity too. Not every memory is a happy one. Some people carry experiences they have never spoken about; difficult childhoods, loss, trauma. War is perhaps the most complex of all. We have a tendency to romanticise it, but for those who lived through it, the reality was often devastating. Many veterans of the First World War never spoke of what they witnessed. Their sons went into the Second World War while their fathers, still carrying their own scars, watched helplessly. Some people will never want to revisit those times, and that choice must be respected. If your relative becomes uncomfortable or reluctant to discuss something, don't press them. Move on gently, perhaps returning to a topic they seemed to enjoy talking about earlier, before steering the conversation forward in a different direction. The trust you build by respecting those boundaries is far more valuable than any single story.
Others, however, want nothing more than to talk, to ensure that what they experienced, what they survived, is not forgotten. If you sense that willingness, listen. Really listen. Those are often the most important stories of all.
Preserving and Sharing What You Capture
Once you have recorded your conversation, the next step is to preserve it and to share it.
The audio recording itself is valuable and should be kept safely. But consider going further.
Transcribing the conversation, typing out what was said in their own words, transforms a recording into a document that can be read, shared, and passed down. Print it, bind it, give copies to family members. You may be surprised how many people will treasure it.
Audio recordings can also be shared more widely. A local history group or archive may be interested in preserving interviews with elderly members of the community - a reminder that the stories of ordinary people are just as historically significant as those of the famous and the powerful.
And do not underestimate the research value of what you have captured. A name mentioned in passing, a place remembered from childhood, a story about a grandparent. Any of these could be the key that unlocks the next door in your family history research.
That client whose father's memory book had stopped me in my tracks at the beginning of this story? His words became their own chapter in her finished family history book, sitting alongside the records and the research as an equal and irreplaceable part of her family's story.
That is what preserving living memory looks like. And it starts with a conversation.
My own father? I'm still waiting.
