About
Contact
To contact Alex Reid, editor of the Lives Retold website, please email aalreid followed by @ followed by gmail.com.
Introduction
The Lives Retold website, which I edit and publish, is a non-profit online archive of life stories. It contains 350 life stories, comprising over 20,000 pages.
The first life story
This project started when I was going through boxes of papers about his life left to me by my father, Philip Reid. This material (which was in my attic) was very difficult to access, and it was not clear to me that any of my children would want to be burdened with it. Having some experience of building websites, I decided to compile an illustrated online account of my father’s life, and put it online. It is here. Although it only contained a fraction of the content of the boxes, it gave a pretty full account of my his life, which I felt deserved to be remembered. Also it relieved me of the worry about the future of the boxes of his papers. If I could make arrangements for my father’s life story to remain permanently online, it would not much matter if the boxes of his papers were lost or destroyed.
How the collection grew
I next wrote an account of my own life - a trip down memory lane which I enjoyed. And I next did life stories for my mother, and my aunt Hilda, who had been a novelist between the wars. From there the collection grew to its present size in three main ways:
Friends. I passed word among friends and neighbours that the Lives Retold website existed, and that I would be glad to add to the collection any accounts of lives that they had in the family, or would wish to write. It was surprising how many did have an unpublished account of the life of a family member.
Family. I added life stories for members of my family, including distant ancestors, wherever I could find them.
Scavenging. Like a collector of matchboxes or teapots, I became a keen collector of life stories and roamed the internet for articles to add to the collection. In some cases this involved re-formatting existing life stories. In some cases it involved transcribing recorded interviews. In some cases it involved archiving (with the permission of the author and publisher) part of a published book. In other cases I would compile from internet sources a life story of a person that I personally found interesting. Those fall into four main categories: Designers, Founders, Inventors, and Makers.
Variety
Rather than adopting a narrow focus, I sought variety. Thus the collection includes lives as diverse as architects, astronomers, authors, beekeepers, campaigners, civil engineers, farmers, pilots, politicians, prisoners of war, scale makers, sea captains, tailors, teachers, and vicars. There is also an archbishop, a boot mender, a cabinet member, a conjuror, a Chelsea pensioner, a field marshal, a gardener, an ironmonger, a judge, a juggler, a knife sharpener, a manufacturer of shirts, a road sweeper, a smallholder, a tea planter, and an Edwardian stunt woman.
Myself
I was born in 1941 and went to school at Winchester College. I took degrees in architecture and communications studies at the University of Cambridge and University College London. Between my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees I served for five years as a helicopter pilot in the Fleet Air Arm. This included service on an aircraft carrier and in the Borneo jungle. From 1972 to 1983 I worked for British Telecom, with responsibility for Long Range Studies and for new services including Prestel, a precursor of the internet. After leaving BT I set up a venture capital company, and joined the boards of Cambridge-based Acorn Computer Group and the architects DEGW. I was chairman of the Council of the Royal College of Art, and was from 1994 to 2000 the Director General, Royal Institute of British Architects. After retirement I joined the board of MJP Architects. My wife Sian and I live in London. My own life story is here.
Printing out life stories
Because the life stories are stored on the website as an A4 pdf they can be easily printed out, either on a home printer or using an online print-on-demand service. For example at www.digitalprinting.co.uk you can order printed copies of any of the life stories by saving and uploading the PDF. They can be printed as stapled booklets of up to 40 pages, or perfect bound paperback books. They typically cost only a few pounds each and are posted to you quickly.
Contact
To contact me please email aalreid followed by @ followed by gmail.com,
Alex Reid
