This paper argues that there is no other way to describe history, and particularly the personal life history of people, apart from in the form of a narrative. It also suggests that as history is not understandable, save in the form of a narrative, the narration as such "makes" history. Drawing on the findings of a research project on autobiographies, it tries to show (a) that our "stories" are structured by historical times and material worlds, but that (b) those times and worlds are deeply influenced by the way people construct, tell and write their own stories. We discover, so to speak, "texts" and "subtexts" of modernity. It is suggested that the history of adult education has many more links to the "subtexts" of modernity than to the main "texts", and that the "biographicisation" of adult learning is an irreversible result of modernisation. (Contains 1 table, 1 figure and 4 notes.)