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. While Watkins brought to bear the techniques of a novelist, Worsthorne (who saw war service alongside Michael Oakeshott, the greatest Conservative thinker of the last century) has applied the insights of a political philosopher. His art has been to place day-to-day Westminster struggles in the context of a grand battle of ideas. What makes his work so delicious, however, is the combination of this intellectual rigour with an incorrigible high Tory romanticism. He still blazes away today, at 87.

Paul Johnson, 82. No living writer combines such breadth of knowledge with such effortless authority.

Harold Evans, 82. At the Sunday Times he was one of the most skilful and dynamic editors Fleet Street ever saw — and he is now the elder statesman of New York media.

Eric Hobsbawn, 93. A master of the broad sweep of history — and an unrepentent communist.

Ruth Rendell, 81. Under her own name and that of Barbara Vine, she is two of the greatest names in British crime fiction.

Alistair Horne, 85. His A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 is considered a classic, especially in America. In 2007, President George W. Bush invited him to the White House to discuss US foreign policy.

Deborah Cavendish, 91. Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, youngest of the Mitford sisters, and a prolific author whose most recent book is the acclaimed memoir Wait for Me!

William Rees-Mogg, 82. Approaching his sixth decade at the top of British journalism.

Statesmen and politicians

Margaret Thatcher by David Cameron

As each year passes, Lady Thatcher’s achievements appear, if possible, even greater. Abroad, she helped lead the West to victory against the Soviet Union. One of my formative memories is seeing the pictures of her visit to Gdansk. The sight of thousands of workers cheering that slight figure inspired me with the potential of politics. And at home, by getting the country to live within its means and rolling back the tide of state ownership, she gave Britain back its self-belief.

She had the courage to challenge established orthodoxies, and the confidence to do so in a slow, clever way. Now 85, she not only took the right decisions for our country, but put Britain back on its feet.

Shirley Williams by Nick Clegg

Shirley Williams is a Liberal Democrat legend. She is that rare thing in politics: both an intellectual and a force to be reckoned with. It is extraordinary to think that she has reached octogenarian status, that she can talk of her childhood experience as a wartime evacuee — and still cause a stir today. No one would deny that she remains a formidable figure in the politics of 2011, from European affairs to education and NHS reform. Thirty years ago, she wrote that the old politics was dying. She was right. It has taken a while, but the battle to decide what the new politics will be like is beginning — and, at 80, Shirley is still firmly on the front line.

Tony Benn, 86. At a time when most politicians are seen as scum, Benn is selling out theatres. His originality and passion remain undimmed.

Norman Tebbit, 80. The ‘semi-housetrained polecat’ still causes mayhem, now via a Telegraph blog.

Betty Boothroyd, 81. The first woman Speaker set a standard that her successors have struggled to match.

Denis Healey, 93. The best leader Labour never had — as Chancellor, he cut more deeply in a year than George Osborne plans to in four.

Stage and screen

Sean Connery by Alex Salmond

His film career helped bring Scotland to the world, and the world to Scotland. He is quick to tell people that it was in Edinburgh’s Fountainbridge that he got his first big break. He was five — and he means learning to read. When you get to know Sean Connery, now 80, you quickly discover his love of learning. He approaches it with the tenacity of someone who has largely been self-taught.

When he was asked to play Bond once again in Diamonds Are Forever, he donated the proceeds to launch the Scottish International Education Trust. He wanted to make sure other young Scots had the chance to pursue their talents. He is as committed as he is straightforward, and as curious as he is passionate. Scotland could not ask for a better friend. And neither could I.

Peter Hall, 80. Arguably the most influential figure in postwar British theatre, the founder of the RSC is still a hot ticket.

Richard Attenborough, 87. One of the most distinctive British screen presences for more than 50 years; has had an equally distinguished career as a director and producer.

Bryan Forbes, 84. Director of The Raging Moon and The Stepford Wives.

Christopher Lee, 88. One of the most prolific and reliably enjoyable actors alive, he has starred in 266 films since 1948.

Gerry Anderson, 82. The father of Supermarionation. His creations – from Captain Scarlet to Thunderbirds – have become a part of British culture.

Scientists

Bernard Lovell by Martin Rees

Bernard Lovell ranks as one of the great visionary leaders of science. Along with others of his generation, the war gave him responsibility and opportunity at an early age. He was thereby encouraged to ‘think big’ when he returned to academic science. He had the boldness to conceive a giant radio telescope, and the persistence to see it through to completion, despite the risk of bankruptcy. It was a huge project by the standards of the 1950s. What is even more remarkable is that, more than 50 years later, this instrument (after several upgradings) is still doing ‘frontier’ science: for instance, it is helping to test Einstein’s theory to a precision 10,000 times better than was possible when it was built. Jodrell Bank is one of the world’s leading observatories. As its centrepiece, the ‘Lovell Telescope’, as it is now rightly called, continues to probe the cosmic frontiers, while becoming as familiar a part of our heritage as Stonehenge. Bernard Lovell, now aged 97, can take immense pride in this lasting monument — he remains an inspiration to younger generations.

James Lovelock by William Waldegrave

Britain’s two superstar scientists, Newton and Darwin, had two things in common: relentless energy and independence. Newton’s freedom came courtesy of the benefactors of Trinity College, Cambridge; Darwin’s from the Wedgwood pottery fortune. James Lovelock shares both attributes. At 91 he has far more intellectual and physical energy than most people half his age. And he chose to step off the scientific/bureaucratic gravy train in the 1950s and make himself a truly independent scientist. This enables him, as he freely says, to take risks and make mistakes that would be punished by research assessments; to ignore the normal boundaries between technology, pure research, and social science. It means he need kowtow to no one. He can tell greens to build nuclear power stations, and conventional climate scientists that he admires Nigel Lawson; and count people as diverse as William Golding and Victor Rothschild among his influences. He is pessimistic about the future of our species, but if some of our descendants survive, it will be because there are enough genes of the Lovelockian type in the pool to see us through. He is one of the greatest men I have had the privilege to meet.

David Attenborough by Matt Ridley

One day it will sink in what David Attenborough has done. Before him natural history was limited by one’s own experience. Now it is shared culture. We have been there, thanks to him, when corals spawn under a full moon, when killer whales snatch sea lions off a beach, or when New Guinean tribes first meet westerners. He has given wildlife celebrity status. After thousands of hours of narration and presentation, and despite affectionate parodies, he is yet to grate upon our ears.

He is a scientist who brings insights, a technician who has helped pioneer new filming techniques, a lyricist whose scripts are masterpieces of concise poetry. Don’t forget he was also a producer who commissioned both Civilisation and The Ascent of Man, and then resigned to present the best of the three great documentary blockbusters of the 1970s: Life on Earth. He was an accomplished television executive, called back from an anthropology doctorate to rescue BBC2 as controller, then groomed for director general of the BBC, a job that — thank goodness — he did not want. That he has remained throughout transparently unspoiled by fame, his settings on receive as well as transmit, is remarkable.

Frederick Sanger, 92. Twice winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. His ‘Sanger method’ allowed for the sequencing of the human genome.

Patrick Moore, 88. Now in his 54th year as presenter of The Sky at Night.

Desmond Morris, 83. Changed the way people think about human behaviour.

Artists and musicians

Lucian Freud by Martin Gayford

Lucian Freud once remarked that he didn’t have any secret except concentration, ‘and you can’t teach that’. Of course, there’s a bit more to it. His has been an epic career, dating back to the 1930s. Even when he was starting out, there were those who believed that figurative painting was dead; but characteristically, Freud took that as a challenge. He persisted through long years when his work was out of fashion.

However fast the life he lived outside the studio, he has always working slowly and observed with extreme intensity. The human subjects of his pictures cover an extraordinary social gamut, from criminals to the Queen, all of whom are seen freshly. But the secret and the mystery is how he translates what he sees into brush-marks on canvas. That’s what makes him that almost extinct thing, a great figurative painter.

Ronald Searle by Chris Beetles

Any artist who has lived to the age of 91, without any reduction in a ‘Searle-like’ graphic edge of unique and expressive quality, will attract envy and admiration. But if he is a man who served his apprenticeship at the age of 22 recording the malnutrition disease and grim deaths of fellow soldiers in Changi Jail under cruel Japanese occupation, and spent the 1950s escaping with his imagination intact from the enclosed Terror of St Trinians and the dysfunctional schooldays of Nigel Molesworth to become the world’s greatest comic draughtsman, the favourite of nine out of ten professional cartoonists, then he will certainly live on to that age and beyond in inventiveness and good humour.

Vera Lynn, 94. The Forces’ Sweetheart remains a force in the album charts.

Stan Tracey, 84. The jazz pianist’s latest album, Sound Check, is hailed by critics as his best in years and testimony to his ‘restlessly sparky imagination’.

Bridget Riley, 80 this week. Still one of the most dazzling, original and vibrant artists in the world.

Acker Bilk, 82. The clarinettist and veteran of 25,000 live performances is now headed to Ireland, with the plan of cheering them up.

Cleo Laine, 83. Played to a packed Royal Festival Hall last weekend, with Andrew Lloyd Webber on piano. Her 1983 Grammy wasn’t even a halfway mark

Colin Davis, 83. Legendary conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Tickets for his next Proms performance (Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis) go on sale on 5 May.