The Spectator’s over-80 power list

It is hard to think of a time when the over-80s have held such sway over British public life. Shirley Williams has the government at her mercy as she decides what to do about its NHS reform bill. If many are unaware that P.D. James is woman, then even fewer will know (or care) how old she is. This is a list of people who are still filling theatres, selling books and inspiring millions in their ninth (and, in some cases, tenth) decade. Their artistic, political or scientific brilliance has only been cast into sharper relief by the passage of time. This far-from-comprehensive list of Britain’s great octogenarians (with a sprinkling of nonagenarians) has one particularly notable exception: the Queen. The success of her reign requires no elaboration.octogenarian

Writers and journalists

P.D. James by Ian Rankin

Baroness James of Holland Park (Phyllis to her friends) turned 90 last year. At the age of 89, she was a guest editor on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and memorably led that organisation’s director general, Mark Thompson, through a forensic and comprehensive interrogation. In the modern transatlantic parlance, she tore him a new one. I can’t say I was surprised. I’ve given talks with her and she is as sharp as any of her fictional murder instruments. She has worked hard for her success (bringing up two children on her own; not writing full-time until retirement) and is a worldwide bestseller. Curiously, she has never won the major crime fiction awards in the UK or US, but remains an intricate and elegant plotter whose best books scratch away the veneer of English life to expose the contradictions and tensions beneath — much as she did with poor Mark Thompson.

Peregrine Worsthorne by Peter Oborne

Postwar British journalism has generated one worthwhile new form: the political column. It has been mastered by only a few practitioners, of whom the most noteworthy are probably Alan Watkins, Henry Fairlie and Peregrine Worsthorne.