This article describes how the use of the biographical approach in nursing practice should enable a fuller understanding of older people as individuals, based on their lived experience. This, in turn, should affect the way in which nurses work with, and care for, older people, encouraging person-centred practice. First, drawing on a life story, the article describes the ways in which people's accounts of their past lives may provide an insight into their present needs, priorities and aspirations; it also helps to reveal and challenge our assumptions about later life. Second, the article discusses why the biographical approach is particularly appropriate for the care of older people in continuing care settings and how this approach could be undertaken.