Be a natural survivor
The German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, notorious for her Nazi propaganda films in the Thirties, was also renowned for her stamina and physical resilience. She survived a helicopter crash at the age of 100, and was still a keen scuba-diver when she died in 2003, at the age of 101. One of the last survivors of the First World War, Henry Allingham was briefly the oldest man in the world before his death in 2009, at the age of 113. As well as witnessing the horrors of war, he suffered two nervous breakdowns, but he remained upbeat. He jokingly attributed his longevity to “cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women.” Another man to weather an inauspicious start in life was the songwriter Irving Berlin, whose family fled Russia during the pogroms of the late 19th century. The composer of White Christmas was a workaholic, often making do with very little sleep, and was prone to bouts of depression; but he passed the century mark in 1988, shortly before his death.