Questions to ask your husband

51 questions to ask your husband about family history

Family history is not dates. It is the stories two generations back that only this person still carries, and the objects that came with them. Ask about his father. Most of what you will hear about his father is also about him.

How to use this list. Ask by voice and record it. One or two questions a visit is plenty; the follow-up ("Who else was there?" "What did she say?" "What happened the day after?") matters more than the next question. The 4 marked tender come last: ask them once, late, in person, with "or would you rather leave that?" in the question.

1. Where were you born, and what was the house like that you first remember?A place the reader can stand in.
2. Who was in the house when you were small? Who was in charge, and who did you run to?The cast, and the power in the room.
3. What did your father do for work, and what did you understand about it as a child?
4. Was there a dish your mother or grandmother made that nobody has managed to make the same since?
5. What did your grandparents tell you about their own childhoods?Family stories reach two generations further back than any record.
6. Which of your grandparents did you know best, and what did their house smell like?
7. How did you leave home? Was it a decision or did it just happen?
8. What did your parents think of them at first?
9. What did money mean in your house? Who held it, and what did "we can't afford it" sound like?
10. What do you remember about the day your first child was born?
11. Where were you when the big news of your lifetime came? What did people around you do?History is only worth a page if it touched this person. Ask what it did to them.
12. Did anyone in your family serve? What did they say about it, and what did they never say?
13. What was rationed, scarce, or impossible to get, and how did people manage?
14. Where did your family come from before here, and who made the decision to leave?
15. What did they bring with them, and what did they have to leave behind?Objects carry whole chapters.
16. What language was spoken at home, and when did it stop?
17. What did your parents teach you that you kept, and what did you throw out?
18. Is there a tradition you kept going that nobody else in the family understands?
19. Is there an object in your house that you would run back in for? What's its story?
20. What did your mother keep in her handbag, or your father in his pockets?Small inventory, enormous recall.
21. What did your family's kitchen table hear over the years?
22. What is a saying you use that you got from your own parents?Two sayings, verbatim. The book needs the exact words.
23. What did you wear that meant something? A coat, a ring, a hat you refused to give up?
24. Who was the worst driver in the family?
25. What did Sunday, or the Sabbath, look like in your house growing up? Who insisted, and who slipped out?
26. Was there a recipe written down anywhere, or was it all in someone's head? Whose head?A recipe is an object with a story and an owner. Ask where it is now.
27. What did your father eat for breakfast every single day?
28. Who sat where at the table, and what happened if someone took the wrong chair?
29. What did people at home know, and what did they get wrong about it?
30. What did your mother or father tell you about their war, and what did they never say?
31. What was the journey itself like? How long, what did it smell like, who was sick, who was kind?
32. What did the people back home think you were doing here, and were they right?
33. Where did the family sit in the evenings, and which chair was nobody else allowed in?The seating plan is the family's power structure, drawn in furniture.
34. Who were the neighbours on either side, and which one did your mother not speak to?A street has a cast too.
35. How did your parents pay for things? Cash in a tin, a book at the shop, the never-never?The tin, the tab and the hire purchase are three different families.
36. Who in the family was tight with money, and who was hopeless with it?
37. Who taught you to dance, and in whose kitchen?
38. Was there a song your mother sang while she worked? Sing a line of it.A recorded line of a parent singing is worth a chapter.
39. Tell me about a family holiday that went wrong. Who was to blame?The holiday disaster is the most-retold story in any family; get the definitive version.
40. What did you send home from a trip: a postcard, a present, a photograph? Who kept it?
41. Who in the family talked to the animals as if they were people? What did they say to them?How someone speaks to a dog is how they speak when nobody is judging.
42. Which friend did your mother not approve of, and was she right?The disapproved friend is a chapter about both of them.
43. What did the grown-ups talk about in the 1950s when they thought you were not listening?The overheard adult world is how a child learns what the decade was afraid of.
44. What was the big news story you remember from the 1950s, and what did your father say about it at the table?
45. Who was always late to the holiday table, and what did your mother say when they finally arrived?
46. What was the holiday argument that happened every year? Who started it?The annual argument is a recurring scene; the book can use it three times.
47. What did you learn about them from their family the first time you visited?
48. Is there a story about your family that was never told outside the house? Would you tell it now, or would you rather leave it?tenderPut the way out in the question itself. People take the door in more often, not less.
49. What did your parents never explain, that you worked out for yourself years later?tenderWhat a child worked out alone is often the truest thing in the book.
50. Was there someone in the family who was not spoken about? What do you know about them?tenderThe unmentioned relative is a door; let them decide whether to open it.
51. What did you find out about a parent after they died that changed how you saw them?tenderThe late discovery rewrites the earlier chapters; the book needs both versions.

What these questions are for

A good book about a person needs more than facts. It needs the person on the page: how they talked, what they wanted, what they did when it mattered, the story that shows them. These questions cover 13 of the things a writer needs about your husband: where they came from, objects, places, food, music, key relationships, habits, routines and work, loves and tastes, their place in history, wants, fears and wounds, how others saw them, beliefs and values, the story that shows them, their voice and sayings, how they look and move, what they want said.

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Or see questions for everyone else, and how to interview a parent about their life.