The King has met the world’s oldest person – who told him she remembers his investiture as Prince of Wales more than 50 years ago – when “all the girls were in love with him”.
Ethel Caterham became the world’s oldest person aged 116 in April after the death of Brazilian nun Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas.
She celebrated her birthday quietly with family in August but said she would mark the occasion properly if King Charles were to visit.
He duly obliged and paid her a visit at her care home in Lightwater, Surrey, on Thursday, just after saying goodbye to US President Donald Trump on Thursday.
Speaking to him in her armchair, she said: “I remember when your mother crowned you in Caernarfon Castle. And all the girls were in love with you and wanted to marry you.”
The King, 76, raised his eyebrows, as one of Mrs Caterham’s granddaughters, Kate Henderson, interjected, saying: “You were saying that the other day, weren’t you? You said ‘Prince Charles was so handsome. All the girls were in love with him’. A true prince – and now the King.”
He quipped in response: “Yes, well, all that’s left of him anyway.”
Mrs Caterham has received 17 birthday cards from the King, and his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, since she turned 100.
In 2023, she featured on the Royal Family‘s official Instagram page, where she was filmed receiving her 114th birthday card from the King.
When she broke the record for world’s oldest person earlier this year, she received a signed letter of congratulations from Her Majesty.
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Last-surviving subject of Edward VII
Mrs Caterham was born on 21 August 1909 in Shipton Bellinger, Hampshire the second youngest of eight siblings.
She is the last-surviving subject of Edward VII, who died the following May.
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Mrs Caterham left for India to work as an au pair for a military family at the age of 18, returning three years later.
She then met her husband Norman, who was a lieutenant colonel in the British Army, at a dinner party in 1931.
They moved from their home in Salisbury to Gibraltar and Hong Kong, where he was stationed, and she set up a nursery school, and they raised two daughters – both of whom died before her.
Norman died in 1976, while one of her sisters, Gladys, lived to be 104.
Mrs Caterham drove until she was 97, played bridge well past the age of 100, and survived coronavirus in 2020 at the age of 110.
