It is fashionable to lament the current vogue for autobiographical writing but, argues David Rice, there are reasons to celebrate it

It is a truism that there's a book in every single human being. That truism was challenged on Gay Byrne's radio show on RTÉ Lyric FMlast Sunday, where the old adage was claimed to be nonsense, amid lamentations that the place is cluttered with boring memoirs.

While I am sure that Byrne did not intend it, one came away with the impression that the only worthwhile memoirs are those of important people who have done important things, and that all the rest are little people, whose little lives are rounded with dreary reminiscences.

Byrne obviously isn't aware of a sea change in the memoir ocean. Yes, in the past people became famous and then wrote their memoirs. It's the other way round nowadays, when people write memoirs and by that very fact become famous. The two best examples are Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashesand Jung Chang's Wild Swans.

But the phenomenon is not all that recent: Ireland gave a lead years ago, with Muiris Ó Súilleabháin's Fiche Bliain ag Fás (Twenty Years A-Growing)and Peig Sayers's autobiography. And what about An tAthair Peadar Ó Laoghaire and Donall MacAmhlaigh? Little people, who by writing memoirs became - what? Big people? How about immortal? But certainly not boring (pace those generations of schoolkids).

One might say these are the exceptions, but surely the more people who write, the more chance there is of discovering more such exceptions.

I once heard a distinguished history professor suggest that there should be a law requiring everyone in the country to write his or her memoir. I think it might have been said tongue-in-cheek, but it was meant to stress the value to history of the memories of every single human being on this island. And every other place, for that matter.

My friends, without exception, regret that they did not ask their parents to write their memoirs before they died. All those happenings, great and small, that led to what we are today, are gone forever. In my family, people did write memoirs. We gave my mother - who died aged 93 - a tape recorder, but she spurned it and put pen to paper. It is a precious document we have today.

IN 1883, MY grandfather, John Stokes, wrote a stunning memoir of a trip through Europe barely a decade after the Franco-Prussian War. He was a gifted linguist, and his encounters with Belgian, Dutch, German and French people are a piece of social history that is irreplaceable. "On reglera avec eux,"growls a French waitress, glaring up at the ruins of the Chateau St Cloud, wrecked by the Germans 13 years before. "We'll settle with them."

When I lived in Cologne, I was always puzzled by those early etchings of the city's skyline, reproduced in all the souvenir shops, etchings that never showed the twin spires of the 13th-century cathedral. Only when I read my grandad's memoirs did I understand why. He learned the story by talking to locals in Cologne. Apparently, the work on the cathedral had ceased with the turmoil of the Reformation and the religious wars, leaving the roofless, spireless walls, with a tiny wooden gantry crane perched on the top. That little T-shaped crane was simply forgotten, and remained perched up there for 300 years. Then suddenly one day in 1841 the crane came tumbling down to the street below. And that crash resounded throughout Germany, awaking the land to its unfinished task. The cathedral was finished by 1880.

They made the spires out of cast iron, by the way; it was quicker and cheaper by then. That's why you can see daylight through the metal latticework.

The manuscript of that memoir was guarded jealously by John Stokes's daughter, my mother - I believe she kept it under her mattress for years. Twenty years ago my brother, Dermot, typed it up from the handwritten document. Three years ago, my cousin, Marie-Anne, scanned it into a computer, and two years ago I edited it on Quark Xpress and produced a book.

The eight-page preface was written by John Stokes's last surviving daughter, at the age of 99. It was simply her memories of her father. This aunt of ours is now 101, by the way, and lives happily down in Monaco.

And last year we printed grandad John Stokes's Through Europe in 1883as a paperback, complete with a cover picture of a Monet puffer train. Fewer than a hundred copies, and just for the family. But it has caused such a sensation among our friends that a top publisher has now got hold of it and is considering bringing it out next year.

I particularly disagree with the suggestion that we are inundated with useless memoirs. A memoir is a social document of its time and, like any antique, it grows in value with the passing of years. It can be of inestimable value to historians, to say nothing of its interest to the writer's descendants.

It must be conceded, of course, that not all memoir writers have the skills to put their memories down effectively. But that can be remedied surprisingly easily. I have been working for the past 10 years with people who want to write a memoir. In the weekend memoir worshops we run in Killaloe, we have had housewives, factory workers, teachers, retired surgeons, politicians' wives, successful business people, failed business people, solicitors (one of whom has now published three volumes), all of whom have gone on to write quite brilliant memoirs. Last week we had a brother and sister, aged 92 and 89 respectively. They could a tale unfold. And will, now.

The past decade has convinced me that there is indeed a book in every one of us.

Not everyone wants to publish their memoirs (although some do want, and do publish). But many just want to get their memories down for family or for posterity. Or even for themselves, to try and understand what really happened. For it is in expressing it, getting it down, that we often understand things for the first time.

Anyhow, there are so many publishing options open to memoir writers today, from websites to blogs to publish-on-demand to eBooks. I recently met a retired man who had his memoir of a Cork boyhood privately printed. His hobby now is selling signed copies from a table which he sets up in malls and supermarkets.The mall takes 10 per cent, and he has made good money without ever yet leaving Co Cork.

ONE OF THE things that stops so many people from writing their memoirs is the fear of hurting relatives or friends. We often recommend what we call the "windows" memoir: you simply open windows on to your life - the bits you want to talk about - and leave the rest alone. Or you can deal with the difficult bits with humour or compassion, a quite magical way of handling the shadow side in all our memories.

But publishing the memoir is merely the last in a very long line of concerns. Getting the memoir out, getting it down, is the crucial thing. And it can have a magical effect on the writer. Just as simply talking to a counsellor or psychiatrist can itself be a cure, so too can merely putting one's memories on paper make the whole world who reads it become one's psychiatrist.

David Rice directs the Killaloe Hedge-School of Writing (www.killaloe.ie/khs), which runs weekend workshops in both memoir and fiction writing. His six books includeShattered Vows andThe Pompeii Syndrome.