Just the odd glass of sherry, secret of UK’s oldest woman
THE secret to a long and happy life? Never smoking, lots of relaxation – and an occasional sherry.
That’s according to Gladys Hermiston-Hooper. And she should know – she’s Britain’s oldest person, and is celebrating her 113th birthday today.
She has seen a lifetime of change since her arrival way back in 1903.
That year, Arthur Balfour was Prime Minister, Edward VII was proclaimed Emperor of India, the Wright brothers made the first powered flight and the first Tour de France was held.
Mrs Hermiston-Hooper remembers the sinking of the Titanic, the birth of television and the Queen’s Coronation. She survived two world wars and has seen five monarchs and 21 prime ministers.
The eldest of six children, she grew up in Rottingdean, East Sussex.
In her younger years, she was an accomplished concert pianist, and counted pioneering pilot Amy Johnson – whom she went to college with – among her close friends.
She also met Thomas Edison, inventor of the electric lightbulb, when he visited her school in Dulwich to demonstrate his breakthrough.
She set up one of the first car-hire businesses and later ran Kingscliff House School, which is now part of Brighton College. Still sprightly, Mrs Hermiston-Hooper only moved into Highfield Nursing Home in Ryde in the last year – having lived alone until she was 101, and then with her son Derek, himself 85, until she hurt herself in a fall. Her hustaken band of 55 years, Leslie, a veteran of both the first and second world wars, died in 1977 aged 77.
His plane was shot down in 1940, and she had to wait seven agonising months until he turned up at a hospital in Buckinghamshire, with burned hands and a nasty head wound.
Mrs Hermiston-Hooper is a grandmother of four, and greatgrandmother to six, the oldest of whom is 26.
She marked her 113th birthday with a party yesterday, surrounded by 20 members of her family. ‘I have always
‘I have always taken it steady’
it steady, and not rushed around,’ she said.
‘I have never smoked and I’ve just had an occasional sherry and eaten well.’
Reflecting on her life, she added: ‘I remember man going to the moon, the flights of Amy Johnson to Australia and other places and when she got married. Amy was a good friend and a very clever person.
‘Getting married to Leslie was a special moment, and when he came back from the First World War and seeing him getting better after injury in the Second World War.’ Mrs Hermiston-Hooper became the oldest person in the UK when Ethel Lang, of Barnsley, died on January 15 last year aged 114.
Last October, at 112, she became holder of another record by becoming the world’s oldest person to have a hip replacement – which she said had given her a ‘new lease of life’.
The oldest person ever to have lived was Jeanne Louise Calment, of France, who died in 1997 aged 122.