Ethel Caterham marked her 117th birthday in Surrey on Friday, celebrating with family and friends as the world’s oldest living person. She lives at Hallmark Lakeview Care Home in Lightwater, where a birthday that would be remarkable on its own carried the weight of a global longevity record.
Her age has made her a fixture in the record books, but the path to this moment is what makes the story linger. Caterham became the world’s oldest living person in April 2025 after the death of Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas, who was 116, and she did so as someone born three years before the Titanic disaster and eight years before the Russian Revolution. She has lived through two world wars, survived Covid-19 in 2020 at 110, and was still driving when she turned 97.
That is why Friday mattered beyond the celebration itself. Caterham’s birthday is not just another round number; it places a British resident at the top of the verified global age ranking at a time when very few people ever reach such an age. She was originally from Shipton Bellinger in Hampshire, raised in Tidworth, Wiltshire, and later spent part of her life abroad, travelling to India in 1927 as a teenager to work as an au pair to a military family before meeting Norman at a dinner party in the UK in 1931.
She and Norman later lived in Hong Kong, where she set up a nursery school, and they raised two daughters. Both daughters died before her, Norman died in 1976, and one of her daughters, Gladys, lived to 104. In her late 116th year, King Charles visited her last September and heard her joke that all the girls were in love with him and wanted to marry him.
The contrast is what gives Caterham’s story its edge: she is now the oldest living person, but the oldest person ever remains Jeanne Calment, who lived to 122 years 164 days. Caterham’s next milestone is already clear enough — every additional month now extends a life that has outlasted empires, wars and generations, and still keeps finding new readers.
