This paper examines the reuse of secondary data from three oral history archives in a current project on ‘Families Remembering Food’. The characteristics of the three archives (The Edwardians, 100 Families and the Millennium Memory Bank) are outlined paying particular attention to how, when and why the original data were collected. The challenges and opportunities of reusing these data are explored under three headings: practicalities, epistemologies and ethics. The paper concludes that the three archives have rich potential for reuse provided that they are adequately (re)contextualised and that the dialogical nature of life history research is sufficiently understood. The paper contributes to recent debates about the reflexive nature of qualitative analysis in general and the reuse of secondary data in particular.