George Orwell tried to kiss me but, horrified, I shook him off

ANNE OLIVIER BELL, 101 from Lewes, East Sussex

The daughter of a distinguished curator at the British Museum, and a cousin of Laurence Olivier, Anne Olivier Bell has spent her long life among some of 20th century’s most iconic cultural figures.

For example, she was 12 when she met h. G. Wells and slid down the mahogany banister at his home in essex, crashing at the bottom into an enormous Chinese vase, which ‘smashed to smithereens’.

Shortly after the war, Anne joined the unit that traced artworks stolen by the Nazis, made famous by George Clooney’s film The Monuments Men.

When in england, she lived on the third floor of a building in North London; George Orwell lived on the second. Inviting her to tea at his flat one day, he made a ham-fisted pass at her. ‘Much to my surprise, he sat beside me and began to kiss me.

‘I was horrified and shook him off. he wrote two or three letters to me after that, and in one, he asked me to marry him. But I said no.’

At the age of 36, Anne married writer and artist Quentin Bell — the nephew of Virginia Woolf. She then began the meticulous process of editing Woolf’s diaries, resulting in five much-praised volumes.

Anne had three children with Quentin, and now has six grandchildren and five greatgrandchildren. ‘I often wonder how it is that I have grown so old,’ she says. ‘every morning, I have a bowl of prunes, a glass of orange juice and yoghurt. So my advice would be: “Do what they tell you to do.”

She doesn’t go out much these days, but she did meet George Clooney at the premiere of The Monuments Men. ‘I said to him: “I’m very pleased indeed to see you, but I must confess, I don’t really know who you are.”

‘And he replied: “Do you know, I sometimes wonder who I am myself!”’