Ethel Caterham, the world’s oldest living person, is celebrating her 117th birthday with family and friends at her care home in Surrey.
Caterham, who lives at Hallmark Lakeview Care Home in Lightwater, became the world’s oldest living person in April 2025 following the death of Brazilian nun Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas at the age of 116.
Born in 1909, three years before the sinking of the Titanic and eight years before the Russian Revolution, Caterham has lived through two world wars and witnessed ?more than a century of dramatic changes around the world.
She is also among the oldest people known to have survived Covid-19 after contracting the virus in 2020 at the age of 110, according to Guinness World Records.
Originally from Shipton Bellinger in Hampshire, Caterham was the second youngest of eight children and was raised in Tidworth, Wiltshire.
As a teenager, she travelled to India in 1927, where she worked as an au pair for a military family. She later met her husband, Norman, a lieutenant colonel in the British Army, at a dinner party in the UK in 1931.
The couple subsequently lived in Hong Kong, where Caterham established a nursery school, before returning to raise their two daughters. Sadly, both daughters died before their mother.
Norman died in 1976. Caterham’s sister Gladys also reached an extraordinary age, becoming a centenarian before dying at 104.
Caterham was visited by King Charles in September last year, shortly after she celebrated her 116th birthday.
During their meeting, she reminisced about Charles’s 1969 investiture as Prince of Wales, when he was 21, telling him: “All the girls were in love with you and wanted to marry you.”
Despite Caterham’s remarkable longevity, she does not hold the record for the longest human lifespan ever verified.
That distinction remains with Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days, according to Guinness World Records.
At 117, Caterham’s life spans more than a century of history, from the Edwardian era and the age of steamships to the modern digital world.
