The warmth of the heart prevents your body from rusting: Marie de Hennezel. This is the best book on ageing I have read: well-informed, realistic, as well as warm-hearted and inspiring. Marie is one of the leading French experts on ageing: she has been studying this field for years, and draws on some excellent role models […]
If Vita Sackville-West is known at all these days, it is as a landscape gardener, Bloomsbury bohemian, or as the role model for Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. In fact, she is a superb novelist too: perceptive, witty and elegant. The central figure of her novel All Passion Spent is an 88-year-old widow, whose last years prove a triumphant liberation […]
Re-inventing your health in later life Charles Eugster is a pioneer in health regimes for people over 65, and well beyond. He has won medals for rowing and sprinting in his eighties and nineties! However, his book offers a lot of help for oldies less fanatically fit then he is. Charles is a Fellow of […]
Alan writes about his experiences of friends suffering from life threatening illness. In the past few months, the wives of two close friends have had late diagnoses of advanced cancer which could be fatal. The husband of another friend has had a stroke. At the Summer School I go to each year, two couples from […]
Discover yourself and have some fun as you grow older. Everyday life these days can be uncertain and unsettling for anyone, and getting older may just seem to make that worse. It may feel tempting to settle into your rut, retreat into safety. In fact, you’re likely to be more happy and resilient if you […]
Cosy friendship in all its forms: including tea, cake, candles! Many surveys show the Danes to be the happiest people in Europe and the world, and the quality of hygge seems to be one reason. Hygge, pronounced hoo-guh, is hard to define or translate: friendly cosiness is the closest I’ve found. The ritual of hygge This […]
Learn new skills, have adventures…find true love! Picture the scene: I am a newly mature single sitting alone at a table for two, wearing smart casual gear which I hope looks suitable, I am waiting for my blind date, Jackie, to appear. To look my best, I am not wearing my glasses, which means that […]
Fresh adventures in later years As we get older, we need fresh adventures to keep us growing. Two new experiences I’ve been enjoying are short pilgrimages and retreats. The difference between a pilgrimage and a walk is subtle: I’d say a pilgrim is walking with a deliberate intent, such as meditation or healing, and often […]
Alan Heeks shares his development through the life stages When I turned sixty in 2008, I set a clear intent of moving into elderhood, growing beyond my prevailing warrior-hero approach to life. Ten years on, I can report good progress on my development through the life stages, but as well as further mysteries. Elderhood and […]
Everyday life these days can be uncertain and unsettling for anyone, and getting older may just seem to make that worse. It may feel tempting to settle into your rut, retreat into safety. In fact, you’re likely to be more happy and resilient if you open up to fresh adventures. I don’t mean the kind […]