Ethel Caterham, the world’s oldest living person, has celebrated her 117th birthday with family and friends in Surrey, England.
Caterham, who lives at Hallmark Lakeview Care Home in Lightwater, became the world’s oldest living person in April 2025 following the death of Brazilian nun Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas at 116.
Born three years before the sinking of the Titanic and eight years before the Russian Revolution, Caterham has lived through two world wars and the Covid-19 pandemic. She contracted Covid-19 in 2020 at the age of 110, according to Guinness World Records.
Born in Shipton Bellinger, Hampshire, and raised in Tidworth, Wiltshire, Caterham was the second youngest of eight children. In 1927, as a teenager, she travelled to India, where she worked as an au pair for a military family.
She later met her husband, Norman, a British Army lieutenant colonel, at a dinner party in the UK in 1931. The couple subsequently lived in Hong Kong, where Caterham established a nursery school, before raising two daughters.
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Both of her daughters died before her, while Norman died in 1976. Her sister Gladys also lived past 100, reaching 104.
Caterham, who was still driving at 97, was visited by King Charles in September 2025 shortly after her 116th birthday.
Despite holding the record as the world’s oldest living person, Caterham is not the oldest person ever recorded. That record remains with Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days.
