The popularity of oral history amongst feminist historians has offered an insight into the 'lived' experience of women's education post-Second World War. Increasingly sophisticated theorising of oral testimony has resulted in a burgeoning literature that addresses both the mediated and negotiated nature of the interview. This paper seeks to extend this discussion by exploring the process of uncovering the many layers of experience that are presented within an interview and the often tortuous process of disentangling these layers of meaning that are both 'composed' and 'discomposed' by the narrator in the telling of their life-story (Summerfield, 2000: 93). The significance of age (of both interviewee and interviewer) will also be explored; a dynamic often ignored, even by feminist researchers who traditionally have been at the forefront of discussing the relationship between the interviewer and interviewee. The paper will then explore an alternative approach to uncovering the educational experiences of women, namely the use of open-ended questionnaires, reflecting on what is to be gained and what is to be lost in contrast to the favoured oral testimony. The authors suggest that from an epistemic point of view, as feminist researchers, we need not exclude the use of surveys as part of our rejection of a more 'positivist' conception of research. The paper will discuss how even though the researcher and respondent are not physically in the same location, there is still, nevertheless, a dialogue occurring, highlighting that as a method the questionnaire is also a mediated and negotiated process. Life history (in whatever format) is told from the present, therefore reshaping an interviewee's/respondent's telling of their life-story. The powerful influence of culture, ideology and myth upon an individual's understanding of the past cannot be ignored and acknowledging the historian as 'subject' within the research process is central. Finally, the paper will discuss the issue of whose story is it anyway? The immediate audience for both the questionnaire and the interview is the academic researcher. Yet the eventual audience is much wider. This may be particularly problematic for feminist academics in terms of both writing style and analytical frameworks. The vast quantities of data produced by interviews and questionnaires gives the researcher almost unlimited power in the re-telling and analysis of the narrative. Is an awareness of the inherent complexities enough justification for the claim that it is indeed possible to 'uncover' women's lives?