Both these books, separately and instinctively, commence their title with the word ‘remembering’. For people with dementia and their families, reaching, reminiscing and acting upon memories is one way of keeping the past alive and the present in tune with life meaning. As Professor Woods states in the preface to Remembering Yesterday, Caring Today (RYCT), the RYCT approach is essentially relationship-centred and evidence-based and has the potential to enhance communication between people engaged in reminiscence activity that goes beyond words and delves into a rediscovery of the self. It is this deeply relational, connecting and biographically-driven aspect of reminiscence work that provides a communication platform from which to stimulate human growth through the recall of memories. From this starting point, anything is possible and these two books, in their own ways, are united by this philosophical and transcendent discourse.

The book by Pam Schweitzer and Errollyn Bruce describes both the RYCT approach – a creative and arts-based way of working with people with dementia and their family members that has developed over the last 10 years – and its use in a group-based programme for people with dementia and family members. Structured around the idea of life review work, the programme retraces the life course and enables memories to be relived and shared. The ethos of RYCT builds on the concept of the preservation of personhood by emphasising the idea of developing a person's current sense of self, embodying the idea of living with dementia. The book is a practical, accessible and comprehensive guide to undertaking a group-based programme using the RYCT approach. Its first half provides an overview of reminiscence therapy and discusses issues to be considered when setting up a reminiscence group, and the second half details the RYCT group programme. Overall, the book is a manual that helps readers to develop and gain confidence when undertaking reminiscence work.

Chapters 1 and 2 discuss the use of reminiscence in dementia care, and Chapter 3 describes a multi-sensory stimuli approach, which includes the use of taste, touch, music, dancing, enactment and poetry. Chapters 5 and 6 consider the practical, emotional and training issues that need to be considered when setting up an RYCT programme. The need to recruit a large team to facilitate the groups is emphasised, and there is essential guidance on the training and development of the workers. Chapter 7 comprises the last half of the book, and outlines and provides a structure for 12 group sessions, each based on a different key life stage. Objectives are stated, useful objects for prompting reminiscence are suggested, and activities are detailed. Examples of the sessions included are ‘starting work and working lives’, ‘weddings’ and ‘holidays and travel’. In the wedding session, members of the group arrive as guests, two members of the group re-enact a wedding, and a wedding buffet is served. To us, this example provides one of the clearest demonstrations of the RYCT approach; showing how environments are created to allow memories to be recreated. The programme described in Schweitzer and Bruce's book is currently being evaluated through a UK National Institute of Health Research-funded ‘Health Technology Assessment’ three-year trial. The nature of the trial allows volunteers from organisations providing care for people with dementia to be involved at a local level. This means that this research work is not only looking to the future, but is providing care and training for local families and staff.

The book by Habib Chaudhury, Remembering Home: Rediscovering the Self in Dementia, is more focused and, true to its title, is about the meaning of the ‘self’ and ‘home’ in helping people with dementia and their families navigate from past to present through shared discourse and mutual understanding. Put simply, older people have all lived through a childhood, adolescence and adulthood and in place(s) they called ‘my home’. Our relationships and social networks – and human geography – may have changed during that journey through life, but remaining are the memories, significant relationships and life experiences attached to each that anchor our ‘self’ to a mental construction that is/was ‘my home’. To elaborate this perspective, the book draws on the conceptual and theoretical work of Tom Kitwood and argues that ‘home stories and personal reminiscentia help give recognition to the personhood of someone who has dementia’ (p. 104). In essence, places and people count.

It is a short book of 117 pages with five chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 outline the self and dementia and begin to relate both to the concept of ‘home’. It is an excellent review and worth the price of the book. The next two chapters – and a substantial proportion of the text – report the author's work with 13 individuals with dementia and members of their families in four care facilities in Wisconsin, USA, through which the concept of a ‘home story’ was developed. Chapter 4, ‘That is My Home’, is the longest and geared towards sharing the lives of those interviewed through their words, photographs, narratives, mementos and significant events. This part of the book is skilfully handled by the author, who uses guided conversations to present not only the ‘home stories’ but also the feelings that emerge from their sharing. Connecting the telling of home stories to people, events, places and relationships in the context of a lifecourse is, for us, the principal message from this book and one we will use in our own reminiscence practice. There is also a short but compelling account of how home stories could be applied to the present day (pp. 100–1). Life stories are in a constant state of flux and transition and it seems that the present-day ‘care home’ for people with dementia is one where friends, food and being cared for are important markers of wellbeing. The final chapter provides ideas about how to turn such stories into activities in a care facility, and gives emphasis to creating empathy, developing a prompt list for encouraging stories about home, conducting small-group work and using photographs in the activities. It is a useful addition to the book but perhaps should have been longer.

The two books reviewed demonstrate and authenticate the idea of living with dementia and exemplify approaches to dementia care that provide both challenges and opportunities. For those of us who work with people with dementia and their families, we are led to the idea that social and psychological growth can occur alongside losses incurred through the journey through dementia. In their own way, each author's emotional and practical guidance helps to bridge the gap between theoretical concepts of maintaining personhood and what is achievable in practice. The books are suited to those engaged in various capacities of supportive care work and we hope that readers are as inspired as we have been by both volumes.