Christmas - the season of togetherness, honouring family traditions and harking back to well-versed stories and formative moments.

But often, those festive days of long evenings, snuggling by the fire and watching that favourite film again, are so fleeting before the relentless bustle of life starts anew. 

Perhaps that’s why local writer Ally Allfrey, from Bighton, near Alresford, has spotted a growing trend of people wanting to reflect on the past, their lives, and what should be remembered.

An expert writer who has written 30 memoirs over the past four years, Ally teases the extraordinary out of ordinary people’s stories, doing them justice and creating books which can be cherished forever.

Ally Allfrey Ally Allfrey (Image: Ally Allfrey) READ MORE: RAF veteran celebrates milestone 103rd birthday in Fair Oak

“The experience is amazing, fulfilling, cathartic, putting unique lives into perspective and creating something for posterity. My clients absolutely love it”, she said.  

People contact Ally because they or a relative lived through pivotal moments which mustn’t be forgotten – the Second World War, the civil war in Lebanon, traumatic adoption, to mention a few.

They want to capture something poles apart from our high-speed world where letters have become a rarity.

Many of these stories have unfolded in Hampshire and Tracy Wickham, from Itchen Abbas, was delighted with Ally’s most recent book.

She said “Ally has written a wonderful book chronicling my 95-year-old father’s life. She put him at ease and managed to tease his memories of yesteryear out from the depths of his mind and onto the page.

"He really enjoyed the process and the result is an eminently readable account of his life which shines a light on a truly bygone era. Ally turned the book around incredibly swiftly, and liaising with her throughout the process was very efficient.

"I’m so glad we used Ally to capture our own little bit of social and family history, and the book will be treasured by our family for many generations to come”.

A linguist with 25 years’ experience in financial communication, Ally knows a thing or two about language and has written her own memoir of three transformational years spent with her family in Sweden. 

Totally personal and structured, involving four to ten hours of face-to-face interviews, her books are between 6,000 and 20,000 words and cost between £1,600 and £4,400, including five beautiful hard-backed copies. 

For more information, contact Ally on alison.allfrey@hotmail.co.uk