‘I do what I like’: British woman, 115, claims world’s oldest living person title

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Born in Shipton Bellinger in Hampshire on 21 August 1909, Caterham was raised in Tidworth, Wiltshire, the second youngest of eight children. At the age of 18 she became an au pair to a military family in British India before returning to England three years later, where in 1931 she met her husband, Lt Col Norman Caterham.

The couple married in 1933 at Salisbury Cathedral, where Norman had been a choirboy. He served as a senior officer in the Royal Army Pay Corps and they were stationed in Gibraltar and Hong Kong, where Caterham set up a nursery.

The couple had two daughters and returned to Britain, where her husband died in 1976.

Caterham has lived in Surrey for 50 years and has three granddaughters and five great-grandchildren. “I’ve been all over the world and I’ve ended up in this lovely home, where everyone is falling over themselves for me, giving me everything I want,” she said.