'We need to preserve the memories': pandemic sparks boom in ghostwritten memoirs

It was lockdown, and months of not being able to see her father, that gave Naomi Gordon the idea that the story of his life should be written down.

“I thought people are losing so many loved ones and life is so very unpredictable at the moment, that we need to preserve the memories that people are usually too busy to ask their parents about,” she said.

Gordon arranged for her 83-year-old father, Raymond Silver to have his memoir ghostwritten. Recording stories of his life, including his search for a painting by Mark Gertler, The Rabbi and His Grandchild, that his mother was featured in and which at one point was displayed at Tate Modern in London, has given the family time to value Silver.

Gordon is one of a growing number of people who, with their families forced apart during the pandemic, are hiring professional ghostwriters to document the lives of their elderly relatives.

Ghostwriting agencies are reporting up to 400% increases in inquiries from grownup children who, frightened and stirred by Covid, say they want to bring their parents’ pasts to life and create a permanent piece of family history.

StoryTerrace, which matches families with professional ghostwriters, has more than 500 active projects in motion – more than at any time in the company’s history. They have doubled the number of full-time staff since the pandemic began and have plans to hire more next year.

“The percentage of projects with a primary aim of publishing are very small,” said Rutger Bruining, chief executive of StoryTerrace. “This is about the pandemic and people being separated from their parents, being worried about them and missing them.

“Children are calling their parents more and talking for longer. They’re also clearing up their homes, looking at photos and finding letters and diaries,” he added. “People also want to present their parents with something positive to do because at the moment, there is so little they can do.”

Gordon agreed. “Time goes forward so quickly usually, that we don’t have time to think about what our parents have done or to value it,” she said. “The pandemic gives us time to stop and have these thoughts, and then do something about it.”

Silver agreed to have his memoir written because during the pandemic he had time to think back over his life and he realised he wanted his past to be understood – and remembered.

“It occurred to me that my grandchildren and great-grandchildren might find my life interesting,” he said. “But also, because I’m a widower, living alone, the pandemic has had a profound effect on my life. I feel it is slipping away and wonder sometimes if my children or grandchildren even realise the sorts of things I went through. It soon gets forgotten when you’ve gone.”

Caro Handley, a writer and editor, attributed the doubling in demand from families that she has experienced since the pandemic to “an awareness of the frailty of life: that elderly relatives are so at risk and can die quite suddenly”.

“It’s so much more immediate and frightening now,” she added. “Grownup children are realising now that if there ever was a time to record their parents’ stories, to protect them from being forgotten, the time is now.”

Handley is writing the memoir of 75-year-old Harjinder Jutley after being contacted by his son, a heart surgeon from Nottingham.

Raj, Jutley’s son, said: “During the pandemic, it was pretty apparent that people of my father’s generation were going to die. I had a desire to find out about his life because it was so radically different to mine and we knew the general story but not his actual experience.

“I thought I’d get to know my father better if he wrote his memoirs down rather than me trying to talk to him: he’s part of the silent generation which finds it hard to open up to their own children,” he said. “I hoped he’d talk more easily to a stranger, which turned out to be the case.”

Jutley said: “I agreed to do it because during this time of the pandemic, we had more time to concentrate and think about our lives. It was bought home to us that we never know what we’ve got in store tomorrow and future generations forget their ancestors.”

Teena Lyons, a professional ghostwriter, said that inquiries concerning family memoirs have increased by a third since the pandemic began. “It’s because there’s a current feeling of nostalgia, with people more interested in talking to their families and recording their voices. People are aware of time slipping away and valuing their relatives’ experiences more because of that,” she said.

Shannon Kyle, another professional ghostwriter, agreed. “I get at least one email a day from people asking about me writing the story of their elderly relatives, which is about double the interest I got pre-pandemic.

“If they’re not seeing mum and dad because of the pandemic, they’re valuing them more and are also having more intense conversations with them on the phone because as their parents aren’t able to go out, their conversations are more likely to stray into the past and into family history,” she said.

“Then the older relatives get into a reminiscing mood and find they have the time and inclination to look out all their old letters and diaries,” she added. “Then the time is ripe: they’re ready to record their lives.”

Extract from Raymond Silver’s memoir

In 1913 my mother, Dora Plaskowsky, was about eight years old and, after school, she used to stand behind the counter of her father’s kosher butcher shop in the East End.

The artist, Mark Gertler, and his mother used to come into my grandfather’s shop to buy meat. One day my mother was standing there in the shop, and Gertler must have seen something about her that he liked. She was quite striking – blue-eyed and fair, which is quite unusual for a Jewish girl.

Gertler asked my grandmother if she would let her daughter pose for him and she said yes. So my mother used to go to his studio after school and he would pay her. He used to give her half a crown which was a lot of money in those days.

This went on for a while, until she came home one day and told my grandmother that she’d seen a lot of nude paintings in the studio. As soon as my grandmother heard that, she said “You’re not going any more!” So that was the end of my mum posing for Mark Gertler.

She always talked to us about the painting, The Rabbi and His Grandchild, but it would be many, many years before we found out what had happened to it [when] we wrote to the art editor at the Jewish Chronicle and asked if he had heard of the painting.

He gave us the address of a woman in Liverpool who had had it in her collection.

Most recently the picture had been sold to Southampton City Art Gallery. It had not yet gone on public display but the gallery offered to make it available for us to go and see it.

My mum, my sister, [my wife] and I went to a private view in the curator’s office. It was the first time I had ever seen it. It was exciting – one of those goosebump moments.

We have followed the painting ever since. [It goes] on loan sometimes. If I know where it is I go to see it. I’ve seen it in Colchester, at Phillips in New Bond Street and at the Tate.