EDGE TOWARDS RETIREMENT
Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man
Brought up in a Barnardo’s children’s home, Symon Basterfield dreamed of becoming an actor.
He was married with five children at 28 but by 35 was divorcing.
He got hitched to Vienetta by 42 and they had a son. He was also fostering children. His job as a forklift truck driver left him feeling he hadn’t fulfilled his potential.
Is his happy family life enough? As a girl, Lynn Johnson, from London’s East End, thought she would work at Woolworths but went on to establish a career as a children’s librarian.
We watched her battling a life-threatening brain condition and, in 56 Up, she lost the job she’d loyally held for 30 years.
In 49 Up, we saw her delight in becoming a grandmother.
Sadly, Lynn was the first of the 7 Up kids to die as she passed away in 2013. In this series we’ll see a very moving tribute from her family. At the age of seven, public schoolboy Andrew Brackfield announced he liked to read the Financial Times to see how his shares were doing.
He later admitted he only said this because his father had prompted him.
Andrew predicted he would study at Oxford, and did just that. He married, had children and the last we saw of him, he was pretty happy with how his life had gone.
He looks back over his life and career and asks what it all means towards retirement.
Is he still contented with how things have gone? Brought up in care, sevenyear-old Paul Kligerman wanted to become a police officer but worried it would be too hard.
By 28, he and his wife Sue had two children and were living in Australia.
During 49 Up, Paul and Sue spoke lovingly about their two grandchildren and their pride at daughter Katy, who was the first member of their family to go to university.
At 56 Up, Paul was working in a retirement village. Is he still in Australia, and happy? Jesuit motto Peter Davies went to the same middle-class school in Liverpool as Neil and shared his ambition to be an astronaut.
In 28 Up, while working as a teacher, he criticised Margaret Thatcher and was on the receiving end of a backlash from right-wing supporters, which made him opt out of the series.
He divorced, remarried, became a solicitor and a father, and moved back to Liverpool.
He returned to the series in 56 Up to promote his band, but is he set to return in 63 Up? Marriage was important to shy East End comprehensive pupil Sue Davis when she was 14, but by 42 Up she was a single mum.
She shared details of the start of a new relationship with Glenn and by 56 Up, they had been engaged for 14 years.
Sue is running the law department at the University of London. She was thrilled when Pierce Brosnan, a fan of the documentary, recognised her.
She also has an amateur dramatics hobby and realises that she might face the loss of her parents. But did she marry? Kensington prep school boy Charles Furneaux hasn’t taken part in the show since 21 Up.
He said he was proud not to have been part of the “prep school – Marlborough – Oxbridge conveyor belt” by going to Durham University instead, but he later studied at Oxford.
He is a TV producer but takes no part in this series.
In 2013, series director Michael Apted hinted at a falling out with Charles, admitting there was “probably quite a depth of ill-feeling”. Farmer’s boy Nick Hitchon proclaimed he wanted to learn about the moon aged seven.
By 21, he had met Jackie, and by 35 they had married and were living in America, where he was a university professor. The couple had a son by the time 42 Up was made.
But by 49, he was divorced and had a new wife, Cryss.
In 56 Up, Nick went to the Yorkshire Dales and became emotional when visiting his family’s graves. By 63, will he have returned home?