Sarah Kanowski

What was it like visiting her when you were a kid?

And how did she look physically, your Nana?

But it's interesting, I think, as you're suggesting, Lucinda, we kind of are used to this crazy expectation there are on celebrities to never look older or somehow if they do do things that

trying to make themselves look younger and that looks crazy, then they get mocked for that.

I mean, it must be an impossible place for them to be in.

But do you see that affecting regular people as well, that pressure to not only live longer, but somehow stay looking younger as we live longer?

Well, it's more than look.

So in what ways are people expected to perform a certain kind of youthfulness, do you think, even in retirement?

This approach to ageing but somehow never actually getting older is being taken to a sci-fi extreme in some notable cases.

What's so-called biohacking?

And his mantra is don't die, but it's very much something that people are in the business of selling, the idea that if you just take the right supplements or go to bed at the right time, you somehow not only live longer but avoid death.

There's another, I guess, more widely accessible longevity approach which operates sort of on the opposite principle almost to those tech bro biohackers.

What's the Blue Zone approach?

So this increased longevity, which even if the tech bros believe they can escape it, is likely to include a prolonged period of frailty and ill health.

Let's look at the impact that has beyond the elderly themselves onto sort of wider parts of society.

First off, and you've kind of intimated this a few times, is who predominantly is looking after the growing cohort of older people?

What sort of stories did women tell you as you were researching this book, Lucinda?

Is there shame, do you think, for that cohort of women of good daughters to even acknowledge the burden they feel out of doing that care?

So it's not just a sort of a practical weight but a psychological and emotional one for some people.

You quote Virginia Woolf, who said famously something along those lines with regards to the death of her father.