(CBS) London — The world’s oldest living person, British woman Ethel Caterham, turned 116 on Thursday, just months after the title passed to her following the death of Brazilian nun Inah Canabarro Lucas.
Caterham was marking the occasion quietly with her family, taking the day “at her own pace,” the care home where she lives in Surrey, just south of London, told CBS News in a statement.
“Ethel and her family are so grateful for all of the kind messages and interest shown to her as she celebrates her 116th birthday this year,” Hallmark Care Homes said in the statement, adding that while she was not giving any interviews to mark the occasion, a conversation with King Charles III “may be her one concession, understandably!”
The British monarch often extends a personal greeting to Britons when they mark 100th birthdays, usually in the form of a written letter. There was no immediate confirmation by Buckingham Palace that Charles had plans to speak with Caterham.
She celebrated her 115th birthday last year with a letter from Charles who congratulated her on a “truly remarkable milestone.”
The great-grandmother is the last living subject of King Edward VII.
The title of the oldest person ever is held by French woman Jeanne Calment, who lived to 122 years and 164 days before her death in 1997, according to Guinness World Records.
Caterham was born on Aug. 21, 1909, in the village of Shipton Bellinger in southwest England, five years before the start of World War I.
She is now the oldest person in the world according to Guinness, the U.S.-based Gerontological Research Group and the LongeviQuest database, after the death of 116-year-old Canabarro in April.
Her secret to longevity? “Never arguing with anyone! I listen and I do what I like,” she has said previously.
She has three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, having outlived both her two daughters and her husband Norman who died in 1976.
She only stopped driving when she was just shy of 100, and played bridge well into her old age.
She even survived a bout of COVID-19 at the age of 110 in 2020, according to the Daily Telegraph newspaper. The same year, she told the BBC that in her life, she had “taken everything in my stride, the highs and lows.”
