Only the Chinese Communists and the Vatican make it a policy to promote people past retirement age to the top jobs. Pope Francis was 76 when elected, while Xi Jinping, the recently appointed Chinese leader counts, at 60, as a mere stripling compared with his predecessors.
So for the Prince of Wales, who reaches 65 still as heir-in-waiting, there must inevitably be a worry that, in worldly terms at least, he is already past his best before even getting the chance to embark on the role for which he has spent a lifetime preparing.
But, though 65 may still carry an echo in our minds as a particular landmark, in reality it can no longer even be called retirement age, as the law pushes that date ever further back to take account of medical advances and increasing life expectancy.
And many in their sixties, seventies and eighties are having the times of their life, taking on new challenges, proving their mettle against younger rivals, and resoundingly bearing out the old adage that the best is yet to come.
Deborah Moggach, 65, novelist and screenwriter, whose book ‘These Foolish Things’ was adapted for film as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
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11 Nov 2013What I feel ‘Best Exotic’ made visible and bore out is that, at 65, we have more choices than ever before. It’s not about slowing or winding down any more, but winding up to another phase in life. Thanks to medicine, there is now a huge new demographic of people past what is laughingly called “retirement age”, and we are not retiring at all. We don’t even feel old. We’ve shaken off all the chores that come with middle years and so we are free to do what we’ve always wanted to do.
And that is precisely what I plan to do, liberated since I turned 65 in June from the crippling weight of worrying about what people might think about me, or what I’m doing. All around me I see contemporaries who have reached this same milestone and haven’t been made happy by the rat race, by doing those jobs we’ve always been told we have to do. Suddenly they are bailing out and baking.
Let’s be honest, the wings of mortality are starting to brush our cheeks and we can see time racing on, so there is no time like the present.
So I no longer allow myself to get bogged down in stuff like accumulating possessions or answering emails. What I plan to do instead is keep chickens and sing in a band. I’ve had a go at the first, but then a fox got them. And although I fear I might be embarrassing in the second, surely there is room somewhere for a husky, leathery-voice chanteuse?
Sir Ranulph Fiennes, 69, adventurer and writer
I had got my bus pass by the time I first reached the summit of Mount Everest, not that it helped. I had tried twice before – in 2007 and 2008 – and failed, so it was more the need not to be defeated that drove me on to a third and successful attempt in May 2009. It was only in retrospect that I saw it as striking a blow for pensioners.
I won’t be going up Everest again, but that is nothing to do with age. I’ve realised that my vertigo won’t go away just by me confronting it.
From now on my challenges will be horizontal not vertical, but at 69 I still have plenty of appetite left for adventure. I enjoy it too much to rest on my laurels and satisfy myself with talking about what I’ve achieved already.
You can’t fight the physical ageing process. It is just what happens to all of us. You simply have to work around it. I now waste time every day doing 30 minutes of sit-ups and press-ups just so I can carry on doing what I used to be able to do without any exercise at all 20 years ago.
One particular element in refusing to be defeated by age is that I didn’t have a child until I was 62. It is a new ingredient that has come into my life. But the mental approach with which I will view expeditions in the future is exactly the same as it was 50 years ago. It neither increases nor decreases. Age has no impact.
Cold by Ranulph Fiennes is published by Simon & Schuster at £20.
Angela Kirby, 81, prize-winning poet
As I was preparing for a poetry reading recently, I heard one of my sons at the box office complaining loudly, “what, pay £5 to hear my mother up on stage reading her dirty poems!” My five children regard my work as a mixture of mildly embarrassing and something that keeps the old girl occupied.
I’ve always written poetry but I was 73 before I had my first full collection published in 2005, and 74 when I got my DPhil in creative writing from Sussex University. It started when I gave up my gardening business after having a hip replacement in 1995, and has been a whole new life, so much more fun than knitting.
As an 81-year-old great-grandmother, I’m always the oldest on the bill at any poetry reading, but the trick is never to waste time worrying about it. I only plucked up the courage to read in public 20 years ago. I was a late starter. I was in my 70s before I went to my first rock concert. Now I’ve a new hip, two new knees and have had most of my insides out, so there’s no reason to wait about. The only concession I make is a wheelchair at airports, not because I need it, but because I love whizzing to the front of the queue.
I hope that I am getting better as I go on, that my latest collection The Scent of Winter (Shoestring Press) is my best yet. Certainly the number of invitations to read grows each year. People say my poems are honest. I don’t set out to shock, but if something needs to be said, I say it, whether it be about sex, or death, or my hopeless taste in men. Now I have retired from that.
Anne Reid, 78, BAFTA-nominated actress
I’m often told that I was very brave at 68 to take on my part in The Mother
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