In this time of uncertainty, the value of tracing and recording real life stories has never been higher says Dr Tony Gray

Family and life stories are so much more than simply a collection of dates. Births, marriages and deaths are of course the punctuation to our lives, but it’s the stories in between those events that make up the real lives; that create who we are. As the director of Words by Design, my job is compiling the stories of people’s lives – and the lives of their families – and producing beautiful books from them.

Take, for example, the Schwarzschilds. A fantastic family photograph shows the parents, Moses and Henrietta, and their seven children, who would go on to produce 15 grandchildren, 29 great-grandchildren and countless other descendants. Tracing those seven siblings and their lives across the world revealed a bewildering and inspiring set of fortunes. They lived during the last decades of the 19th century; up to and through both world wars.

One became an astronomer, developed important theories in astrophysics and corresponded with Einstein. Another became a significant artist, and a third was a New York stockbroker who made his fortune in the US, but sadly died in a mysterious fall from a three-storey building. One of the daughters raised her own family of six, one son was something of a philosopher, and yet another an accomplished chess-player whose own son went on to create a UK-based business empire.

So many stories: some of great accomplishment and, inevitably, some of pain and loss, as many family members were lost in the Shoah.

I’m currently working with a number of individuals who came to England on the Kindertransport, who have their own amazing tales to tell. There are stories of internment, service in the forces, survival and forging new lives, and of finding relatives and branches of the family that they didn't previously know existed.

Exploring and recording these histories provides opportunities for understanding, especially for new generations. What was life like for my grandparents in Budapest during the interwar period? Why did my father never wish to talk about life in Hamburg in the mid-1930s? Why does our family have relatives buried in graveyards in Vienna? And why was my grandmother’s name so different from mine, when we are part of the same family?

In times such as these, tracing and recording our personal histories is the only way to get answers to these questions. Knowing about and understanding our past brings much needed perspective, a sense of the long journey that we are all a part of, and inspiration as we struggle to adapt and change in the midst of a turbulent world.

By Dr Tony Gray

Header photo: Henriette and Moses Martin Schwarzschild

Words by Design is a publishing consultancy that specialises in writing and researching personal biographies and family histories. Visit wordsbydesign.co.uk to find out more.