118 questions to ask your grandparents
This is not a listicle. It is the actual bank of questions Hystorie’s interviewer chooses from, published in full, because a good question is worth more to you than it is to us.
They are all built on one rule: ask for a scene, never a summary. “What was your childhood like?” gets you three words and a change of subject. “What did the kitchen smell like on a Sunday?” gets you twenty minutes, and three more memories nobody had thought about in forty years.
Before you start
Record it, even badly
The voice is the part you cannot get back. A phone on the table between you is enough — nobody has ever regretted the audio quality of a recording of their grandmother.
One question at a time
Handing somebody a list of a hundred questions is handing them homework. Ask one. Wait. The silence after an answer is usually where the real answer arrives.
Follow what they said, not your list
If they mention a shed, ask about the shed. The best material is always three questions off the plan, and the list is there to restart you, not to be completed.
Do not correct them
Dates will be wrong and stories will contradict each other. Write down what they said anyway — how somebody remembers a thing is itself part of the record.
Stop before they are tired
Forty minutes is plenty. Two good afternoons beat one exhausting one, and there is almost always another afternoon.
Start easy
Nobody opens with what they regret. Begin in the first group below and work down — the hard questions are only answerable once the easy ones have warmed things up.
The questions
Grouped by subject. You will not get through them all, and you are not meant to.
Childhood
- What did the kitchen smell like on a Sunday?
- What were you like as a small child — were you bold, or quiet?
- Where did you go when you wanted to be on your own?
- What did you get in trouble for most often?
- What did your road or street look like when you were small?
- Was there a place you were frightened of as a child?
- How far were you allowed to roam, and where did you actually go?
- What happened in your house on a Saturday?
- What is the first thing you can remember at all?
- What did you want to be, before anyone told you what was realistic?
- What did you and your friends do that your parents never found out about?
- When did you first understand that adults could be wrong?
- What did a shilling — or a pound — buy you as a child?
- Who looked after you when your parents could not?
Family
- What was your mother like when nobody was watching?
- What was your father like in a bad mood?
- What did your parents argue about?
- What did your mother always say? The exact words.
- Which of your brothers or sisters were you closest to, and why that one?
- Was there anything the family did not talk about?
- What did your father do all day? Not the job title — what did he actually do?
- What do you wish you had asked your parents while you still could?
- Who in the family were you said to take after?
- Was there a relative everyone was slightly wary of?
- Who was the one who kept everyone in touch?
- Is there someone in the family you fell out with? What actually happened?
- How far back can you name your family? Say the names.
- What did your grandparents’ house smell like?
Home
- Describe the house you grew up in — start at the front door and walk through it.
- Which room did everyone actually sit in?
- When did you last stand in that house?
- Was the house cold? How did you heat it?
- What was the first place that was properly yours?
- What is the one object from that house you would want back?
- Why did you leave, and did you want to?
School
- Were you any good at school, and did anyone notice either way?
- Which teacher do you still remember, and what did they do?
- Was there a teacher who was cruel? What happened?
- What did you do at lunchtime?
- What were you better at than anyone gave you credit for?
- What did school get completely wrong about you?
- Who did you walk to school with?
- How old were you when you left, and what did you do the following Monday?
Friendship
- Who was your best friend, and what did the two of you do all day?
- Is there a friend you lost touch with that you still think about?
- Who could make you laugh until you could not breathe?
- Which friend told you the truth when nobody else would?
- What is the maddest thing you and your friends ever did?
- Who did you turn to when something went badly wrong?
Love
- How did you meet? Tell it the way you would tell a stranger.
- What did you notice about them first?
- When did you know?
- Where did you go on a night out, and what did it cost?
- What did the two of you argue about, all the way through?
- What did you learn about staying with someone that nobody tells you?
- Was there someone before, who it did not work out with?
- What happened on the wedding day that was not in the plan?
Work
- What was the first job you were ever paid for, and what did it pay?
- What were you actually good at, at work?
- Who taught you how to do the job properly?
- What did you make, build or fix that is still standing?
- Was there a day at work you have never forgotten?
- Did you ever walk out, or want to?
- Who did you work beside that you still think about?
- How did the work change over the years you did it?
- What did the job cost you?
- What were you proudest of, that nobody outside the job would understand?
Food
- What did you eat on a normal Tuesday?
- What did somebody cook that nobody has made properly since?
- What were you made to eat that you hated?
- Who did the cooking, and did they enjoy it?
- What was on the table at Christmas?
Traditions
- What did Christmas morning actually look like in your house?
- Is there something your family did that other families found odd?
- Which tradition stopped, and when did you notice it had?
- What happened on birthdays?
- What did a funeral look like where you grew up?
Music
- What song takes you straight back, and back to where?
- What was playing in the house when you were young?
- What is the first live music you ever saw?
- Did you sing or play? Were you any good?
Travel
- Where did you go the first time you left home properly?
- Did you ever emigrate, or nearly? What decided it?
- What is the longest journey you ever made, and how did you travel?
- Which place did you not want to come home from?
- What went wrong on a journey that is funny now and was not then?
Joy
- What is the happiest you can remember being?
- What still makes you laugh, years later?
- Describe an ordinary day you would live again exactly as it was.
- When did you last laugh until you cried, and who was there?
- What went right that you never expected to?
Hard times
- What is the hardest year you have lived through?
- Who helped you, and did you ever tell them what it meant?
- Was there a time when money was genuinely short? What did you do?
- Who did you lose that you were not ready to lose?
- What got you through it — honestly, not the tidy version?
- What are you tougher about than people realise?
Beliefs
- What did you believe at twenty that you do not believe now?
- What part did religion play in the house you grew up in?
- What would you not do, whatever you were offered?
- What do you think happens after?
- What changed your mind about something important?
- What do you worry about, when you cannot sleep?
Character
- What are you hopeless at, and have always been?
- What do people get wrong about you?
- What is the thing you are least proud of?
- What makes you genuinely angry?
- How do you take your tea, and has that ever changed?
- What can you do that almost nobody knows you can do?
- What were you thinking, standing there?
- What do you miss most about being younger?
Advice
- What do you know now that would have been useful at twenty-five?
- What would you say to somebody going through what you went through?
- What advice were you given that turned out to be wrong?
- What do you want your grandchildren to know about you that they do not?
- What are people wasting their time worrying about?
- If your grandchildren could live one day of your life, which day would you give them?
- What are you still hoping to do?
Or let it ask them for you
The hard part of this is not the list, it is the follow-up — hearing “we used to go to Bettystown every summer” and knowing to ask who drove, and what happened the year they stopped. That is the whole of what Hystorie does: it asks one question, listens to the answer, and asks a better one, then keeps every word exactly as it was said.
They can answer out loud, so the recording is kept as well as the words. It is free to start, there is no account, and you end up with a private archive you can print as a book.