Voice Desk, 22 August – Ethel Caterham, recognized as the world’s oldest living person, celebrated her 117th birthday on Friday surrounded by family and friends at her care home in Lightwater, Surrey.
Caterham 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. According to Guinness World Records, Caterham is also among the oldest people known to have survived COVID-19 after contracting the virus at the age of 110 in 2020.
Born in Shipton Bellinger, Hampshire, as the seventh of eight siblings, Caterham grew up in Tidworth, Wiltshire. At the age of 19, she travelled to India in 1927, where she worked as a domestic worker and child carer for a military family.
She later met Lieutenant Colonel Norman Caterham at a dinner in Britain in 1931, and the couple married. They had two daughters, both of whom died before their mother. Her husband Norman died in 1976.
Caterham remained active well into old age and continued driving until she was 97. Following her 116th birthday last year, King Charles III visited her at her care home. During their meeting, she jokingly recalled the time when Charles was Prince of Wales, saying that all the girls had been in love with him and wanted to marry him.
Caterham is also the last known living person from the reign of King Edward VII.
However, she does not hold the record for the longest-lived person in history. That record remains with Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days.
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