Award-winning writer Claire Lorrimer wanted to be a war spy

At 95, she has just won an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Romantic Novelists’ Association, and is still on top form.

And, if anyone can look back on a life well lived and feel confident there are more incredible things to come, it’s this woman.

“I haven’t made things happen to me — they’ve just happened to me,” says Claire, who’s sold more than 100 million romantic novels, and whose mother Denise Robins had huge bestsellers with Mills & Boon.

“I’ve been very fortunate and I don’t think there has been even a moment when I have thought: ‘I’m bored,’ not even now. At 95, my life is still relatively full of incident.

“As a child, I took it for granted that Mother went into her study and worked until lunchtime.

“The house was always full of important people, authors and so on. I just thought it was a bit of a nuisance, as I had to put on my best dress!”

A tomboy who just wanted to play with her rabbits and ignore Noel Coward, Ian Fleming, Jon Pertwee and Ivor Novello as they came to visit, Claire’s life changed when her mother gave her a portable Remington typewriter of her own.

“She was incredible, writing more than 160 books, more than her good friend, Barbara Cartland,” says Claire, “and I still have the typewriter.

“What do I think of computers? I would love to shove mine down the loo!

“It comes with little boxes saying: ‘Do you want to do this?’, ‘Press this,’ and I don’t want to do any of those things.”

Another thing she didn’t want to do — at first, anyway — was her secret work to track enemy aircraft during the Second World War, the famous Dowding system.

Claire had wanted to be a proper spy and felt this might be a bit tame, but as even Winston Churchill would acknowledge, it was vital work and we wouldn’t have seen off Hitler without it.

“I was too young, but in retrospect, I feel proud of that time,” admits Claire, who recently showed Prince Charles and Camilla the filter room where she worked.

“By the end of it, when Churchill talked of ‘The few’, that was probably the proudest moment of my life.

“I really liked Charles and Camilla when I met them.

“He was charming and she was perfectly nice, people with no side to them, a good sense of humour, and just people you could really talk to.”

So clearly, such an eventful life has kept her young, but what else does she put her success down to?

“It’s partly just being blessed with good health, whereas if you’re crippled with arthritis in your 20s, you’re not going to be sprightly in your 90s,” she says.

“I also think it’s a matter of using your brain, not letting it grow old and go to sleep. So being interested in events, life, people, doing crosswords, it all keeps you mentally alive.

“Alcohol? I don’t get on with it that well, and after a couple, I talk a lot of nonsense.

“I do enjoy a gee-up, though. It’s just the eyesight going that’s a problem. I have this macular degeneration that makes things hard.

“I’ve acquired a talking book facility, because I would go mad if I couldn’t keep reading.”

“I hope someone finds a way to make crosswords do the same thing.”

Once told to put more sex in her novels by her American publishers, what does she think of today’s raunchy books?

“You should leave some things to the imagination,” she says. “Think of those Victorian days, when a gentlemen would look at piano legs and think of an attractive woman!”

Like me, she couldn’t think of anyone still writing at the age of 100. So does Claire envisage herself breaking the mould and still publishing new works after a century?

“I hope I’m not going to live to over 100!” is her surprising response.

“I don’t think that once you’ve lost your marbles, there’s much point in carrying on!”

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