Main content

Nina Stibbe: My five favourite books featuring older people

To celebrate Nina Stibbe’s Paradise Lodge on Book at Bedtime, we asked her to share some of her favourite novels featuring older characters.

My inspiration for writing Paradise Lodge was of course the real old people I worked with in my teens at the nursing home in leafy Leicestershire. But since then I’ve encountered many glorious characters along the way – so many, in fact that it has been difficult to choose just five. People are funny at whatever age but I really love the kind of humour that comes from older people - full of wisdom and the confidence that comes with experience, and a smattering of bewilderment at the modern world. And I haven’t even mentioned Agatha Christie’s glorious Miss Marple nor the recent gem Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey.

Author of Paradise Lodge, Nina Stibbe

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington

In this magical and very funny book, ninety-two-year-old Marian Leatherby is given an ornate hearing trumpet and the first thing she hears with it is her family plotting to commit her to an institution. Soon, she is imprisoned in a strange, grim retirement home, where the elderly must inhabit weird igloo-shaped buildings and endure twisted religious preaching. But when another elderly resident secretly hands Marian a book, a brilliantly surreal adventure begins to unfold.

Graham Greene, novelist and author of Travels with My Aunt
I really love the kind of humour that comes from older people - full of wisdom and the confidence that comes with experience
Nina Stibbe

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

Clever, funny and gruesome. There is no single protagonist here, but rather a collection of elderly people who get mysterious phone calls reminding them of their mortality. The title translates to "Remember you must die" and is the message delivered by a series of insidious phone-calls made to the elderly Dame Lettie Colston and her acquaintances.

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor

Mrs Palfrey, recently widowed, arrives at the Claremont hotel one rainy Sunday in January (of all months!). Taylor’s pin-sharp observations have you giggling and crying by turns. The hilarious cast of elderly characters provide the laughs while the inevitability of death and decline – in a setting so out of time and lacking in compassion - makes this novel incredibly sad as well as delightfully funny.

Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym

This is the story of four ordinary office workers on the verge of retirement. My immense love for Pym’s earlier books brought me to this book and though I found it unrelentingly sad, Pym’s observations on the human condition and the strategies necessary to ward off ‘aloneness’ are almost unbearably poignant.

Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene

This wonderful novel follows the travels of Henry Pulling, a boring retired bank manager in his late-50s and his eccentric Aunt Augusta as they make their way across Europe, and eventually, even further afield. Aunt Augusta drags Henry away from his dull suburban existence into a world of adventure, excitement glamorous crime and, ultimately, love.

More from Radio 4