Family oral history: how to prepare, ask and record the interview

Every family has stories that live only in someone's memory: how your grandparents met, what the war years were like, why the family moved. An oral history keeps them. It is a recorded conversation in which someone tells, in their own words and their own voice, what they lived through. You need no studio and no training. A phone, a quiet room and a good list of questions are enough.

What oral history is

Oral history is a recorded, first-person account. The person who lived it tells it, and the recording keeps not only the facts but also the voice, the pauses, the laugh and the dialect. For a family that means your grandchildren can hear their great-grandmother tell her own story.

It is not a quiz about dates. Dates can be found in records later. What you are after is experience: what it felt like, what people said, what happened next.

Prepare the interview

• Choose who. Start with the oldest people in the family. One person per interview works best; with two, one usually takes over.
• Ask permission. Explain what you want to record and why. Ask whether you may keep the recording and share it with the family, and with whom. Ask again at the start of the recording, so the consent is on the file itself. Respect a no, or a 'not that part'.
• Write a list of questions. Fifteen to twenty is plenty. You will not use them all.
• Bring prompts. Old photos, a letter, a medal, a recipe card. Objects bring back memories that a question alone does not reach.

Our free sheet of twenty questions can be printed and given in advance, so the person can think about the answers.

Questions to ask, by stage of life

Follow roughly the order of a life. It helps the memory, and the recording is easier to follow later.

Childhood

• Where did you grow up, and what did the place look like?
• Who lived with you, and what were your parents like?
• What did you play, and with whom?
• What did a normal Sunday look like?

Work

• What was your first job, and how did you get it?
• What did an ordinary working day look like?
• What are you proud of in your work?

Love and family

• How did you meet your partner?
• What do you remember about your wedding day?
• What was it like when your first child was born?

Hard times

• What was the hardest period of your life, and what got you through it?
• Was there a time when money was short? How did the family manage?

The world around them

• Which event in the news do you remember most clearly, and where were you?
• What has changed most since you were young?

Advice

• What do you know now that you wish you had known at twenty?
• What would you like your grandchildren to remember about you?

For a shorter set, see 10 questions to ask your grandparents.

Interview technique

• Ask open questions. 'What was your first job like?' gets a story; 'Did you like your first job?' gets a yes.
• Allow silence. Count to five before you speak. The best part of an answer often comes after a pause.
• Follow up. 'What happened then?', 'Who else was there?' The follow-up is often worth more than the question on your list.
• Do not correct. If a date sounds wrong, note it and check it later.
• One hour at most. Telling is tiring. Stop while it still goes well and plan more sessions. The second conversation is often richer than the first.

More in how to interview older family members and the art of recording family stories.

Recording tips

1. A phone is enough. The built-in voice recorder is clear enough for a conversation. See why voice memos work so well.
2. Turn on airplane mode, so no call or notification interrupts a story.
3. Choose a quiet room. No television, no radio, the window closed. Curtains, a rug and a sofa absorb echo; a bare kitchen sounds hollow.
4. Put the phone close to the speaker, about an arm's length or closer, on a folded cloth so the table does not knock.
5. Make a test recording of thirty seconds and listen back.
6. Record video if they agree. A face and hands add a lot. Keep the phone close enough for good sound.
7. Say the date and place at the start: 'It is the twelfth of October, I am with my grandmother in her kitchen.' Then the file explains itself.

After the interview

• Copy the file the same day to two places, for example your computer and a cloud service. A phone can be lost.
• Name it with the name and the date, such as 2026-10-12_grandma-anna_childhood.m4a.
• Keep the original file. If you want to cut, work on a copy.
• Know the formats. Phones often save M4A. WAV is larger and uncompressed, good as a master copy. MP3 opens almost everywhere.
• Write a short summary with time stamps, for example '04:10 the farm; 12:30 meeting grandfather at the dance'. Then anyone can find a story in an hour of audio.
• Transcription is optional. It helps for searching, but takes many hours.

Preserve and share

A recording only matters if the family can find it. Keep it next to the photos it is about, with names and years, so a listener knows who is speaking about whom. Share it with the people who were part of the story and ask them to add what they remember. To bring recordings together with photos and letters, see a family memory book, digital or printed.

How The Memory Palace helps

The Memory Palace is a private 3D palace with wings and rooms, on iPhone, iPad, Android and in the browser, in five languages, with data stored in the EU.

• The voice next to the photo. The photo hangs on the wall with a name and a year, and the recording sits next to the photo the person talks about.
• Record in the app or add a file. Record directly in the app, or add the audio file from your interview.
• A room per person. Photos, recordings and written stories of one person together. You decide how to arrange it.
• Invite relatives. Rooms are private by default. Invited family can add their own photos, stories and voice recordings.
• Legacy and export. Under Settings, Legacy you choose who receives which wings or rooms, and when. A full export as a ZIP file is possible at any time, also on the free plan.

Not ready to record? Our free family interview asks one question about a life, with two follow-up questions written in advance, and stays in your browser. Or walk through an example palace, no account needed.

Related guides

• How to preserve your family history and pass it on
• Planning your digital legacy: photos, voice and stories
• Family reunion: planning it and capturing the stories