In 1930, the year of my mother’s birth, female life expectancy was sixty-three, so on her death at seventy-seven she exceeded the norm by fourteen years. My grandmother fared even better: when she was born, in 1898, her life expectancy would have been only fifty-two. She lived to be seventy-eight, outstripping that by twenty-six years, which may in part be a reflection of the huge number of medical advances during her lifetime – although her cigarettes didn’t help her in the end. The prediction for me, when I arrived in 1961, was a life that might be seventy-four years long. That would leave
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