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The secret of longevity is to do what you like, according to the 115-year-old British woman named the world’s oldest living person.
Ethel Caterham, born in 1909, is the first Briton to claim the title of world’s oldest person since 1987, when 114-year-old Anna Williams was the record holder.
Caterham, the last surviving subject of Edward VII, acceded to the title after the previous record holder, Inah Canabarro Lucas, a Brazilian nun, died at the age of 116 on 30 April.
Caterham, who lives in a care home in Lightwater, Surrey, puts her longevity down to her attitude to life. “I’ve taken everything in my stride, the highs and lows,” she told BBC Radio Surrey in 2020, adding she has a maxim of “never arguing with anyone”. She added: “I listen and I do what I like.”
The title has been bestowed on Caterham by LongeviQuest and the Gerontology Research Group, research organisations that verify ages for the Guinness World Records.
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Born in Shipton Bellinger in Hampshire on 21 August 1909, Caterham was raised in Tidworth, Wiltshire, the second youngest of eight children. At the age of 18 she became an au pair to a military family in British India before returning to England three years later, where in 1931 she met her husband, Lt Col Norman Caterham.
The couple married in 1933 at Salisbury Cathedral, where Norman had been a choirboy. He served as a senior officer in the Royal Army Pay Corps and they were stationed in Gibraltar and Hong Kong, where Caterham set up a nursery.
The couple had two daughters and returned to Britain, where her husband died in 1976.
Caterham has lived in Surrey for 50 years and has three granddaughters and five great-grandchildren. “I’ve been all over the world and I’ve ended up in this lovely home, where everyone is falling over themselves for me, giving me everything I want,” she said.
