BBC: Recording Your Life Story in a Book Just Got Easier

LifeBook Memoirs is featured in BBC’s Memoirs are no longer just for the rich and famous

We were very honored to be featured in BBC’s article Memoirs are no longer just for the rich and famous.

Here’s a short extract from the article:

Ali Levin struck upon the idea of her elderly father turning his life story into a book as a way of helping lift his spirits.

A distinguished endocrinologist and academic, Robert Levin, now 82, from Boston, Massachusetts had Parkinson’s disease and his faculties were fading. “His profession was his purpose in life,” said Hall, a leadership coach in her 40s, who lives near Oxford in England.

Across the Atlantic from her father, Hall was saddened that their telephone conversations were tending towards small talk. “Our conversations were more and more about sport and less and less about things I thought were really meaningful or interesting. At the same time there was more and more I wanted to know about his life.” Through word of mouth, she heard about a biography writing service. Ali struck upon the idea of her elderly father turning his life story into a book as a way of helping lift his spirits.

“When I mentioned the idea to him he really lit up,” Levin said. She entrusted the project to LifeBook Memoirs. LifeBook Memoirs is a company that has produced more than 400 personal memoirs since its launch in 2012. Over about eight months, her father confided his memories to an interviewer who visited him regularly at home. “Dad would review his notes, go through pictures. It was something he could think about and engage with,” she said.

The recordings were then crafted into a narrative by a ghostwriter. The result was Dancing with the Doctor, a hardback book with photographs and letters which Levin gave to family, friends and former colleagues.

The article covers the stories of other authors as well. Read more here.