how many of us know what their lives where like, the sort of people they were in their youth? The glimpses rare diaries give us are frustratingly incomplete. We often intend to write things down, but never get round to it. Hannah Reneir has come up whith an answer: she writes other people's autobiographies a chronicle not of the famous, but of the ordinary. 'When I started I didn't take it nearly so seriously as I do now, having met people who genuinely will talk and have led interesting lives' she says.

The assurance of confidentiality encourages her subject to overcome any instinct of self-censorship. 'I had the confidence to be honest' says a 62-year-old man who made and lost one fortune before making another. 'I was surprised at what came out. There where things that hurt, like my divorce, and the pain was still there' she also recognised patterns laid down in childhood, which showed themselves in repeatedly making the same mistakes. 'It's amazing how many people really have been conditioned by their parents' she says. "The injunctions and encouragements that were laid down in childhood have effects for the rest of their lives. They marry the sort of people of whom their parents approved or go in the opposite direction as a sort of rebellion'.

A lot of disappointments come out. Sixty years later they still are regretting or resenting things that were never resolved with their parents. There is no age of reason. If people had hang-ups in their youth, they still have them in middle age. They live their lives in an attempt to impress a parent who wasn't impressed and if that fails some of them seem to be seeking permission to say 'I can't stand my mother'. Each book involves up to 30 hours of taped interviews which Ms Renier rearranges chronologically and interpreting it. Ms Renier organises her material logically and writes well; the final content is as good as its subject. The book that emerges does not look like a cheap product and carries a price tag of nearly £3,000 with extra copies at £25 each. She receives many inquiries a week, but the cost inevitable with the time involved clearly deters many people.