Sometimes extraordinarily lucid, he still plays the piano, still chats and walks with Precious, lunches with friends, plays with his son, puts on his trademark brightly coloured ties to stride out in the world.

A COUPLE of years ago, I reviewed for these pages a documentary in which broadcaster and journalist Jon Snow in his mid-seventies, travelled to communities all over the world in which there were an unusual number of centenarians. It was a classic Snow programme, demonstrating his softly spoken, empathetic but rigorous interviewing manner, his skill at getting his interviewees to hit the nail on the head. He concluded with satisfaction that the chief ingredient for living to 100 with all one’s faculties intact was never to stop working. Communities of happy great- and great-great- grandparents didn’t know the meaning of the word retirement.

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