Don't make hard work of growing older, says Josceline

With companies winding up pension plans and many people failing to save into private schemes, giving up work early is already a luxury only a few can afford and the situation is only going to get worse. In France, proposals to raise the retirement age caused bitter industrial action and while British workers have reacted with resigned acceptance, the mood among those staring at a state pension which doesn't even cover basic household bills is not exactly buoyant. But is working into your 60s, 70s and beyond really such a bitter pill to swallow? Not if you believe Josceline Dimbleby.

"I have been brought up with such a strong work ethos," says the 67-year-old food writer and former wife of broadcaster David Dimbleby. "And I genuinely don't think my three children have ever experienced the concept of people retiring either. David has always worked incredibly hard, and their grandparents were very active. I don't believe in a forced age of retirement and I don't think there's a point in time when older people should give way to younger people. Yes, people change with age, but as long as they are doing a job they still feel a real interest in, they can contribute a lot. I find active, older people incredibly inspiring – because they're interested in life in such a deep way."

Research published recently suggests Josceline might be on to something. Figures from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) showed just under half of employers oppose the right to enforce retirement and that even before the bar is raised in 2018, 41 per cent of people intend to work beyond the age of 65. For some it's a decision made purely for financial reasons, but there are others for whom work is a way of life they simply don't want to give up.

"Older people are not what they used to be," says Josceline, who recently wrote her memoirs, Orchards in the Oasis, to add to the 16 cookery books she's already published. "They look after themselves better physically, but it's also their attitude, they don't have to behave old. In my mother's generation, when you were over 35, you looked completely different. You wore different clothes, you were a different species really. It's often said that 60 is the new 40, but it's true."

She was married to David for 25 years before the couple separated in 1992. Inevitably, it was a painful period in the both their lives, but looking back there's no trace of bitterness, just a quiet acceptance that some things just aren't meant to be. "It happens and these days there is no stigma to it," she says. "Gosh, I've got lots of friends who are separated and it makes no difference. People aren't so formal now. So if you go for supper, you don't have to have a man. You don't have to have equal numbers – and no longer is it strange to see a woman sitting alone in restaurants."

There's little, it seems, that can faze, Josceline, who is increasingly becoming a pin-up, not only for the benefits of working long past official retirement age, but for embracing the technological age.

"I love that I can think of something in the middle of the night, and can send that person an email," she says, adding that the next project on the horizon is a photographic book. "I can't understand friends of mine, to whom I'll say, 'Find it out on Google' and a blank look comes over their faces. They get terribly defensive, angry even and say it's all a terrible waste of time, but of course it's not at all."

Wary perhaps of sounding as though she's ageing too gracefully, Josceline admits she didn't enjoy her 65th brithday, but as always her characteristic pragmatism soon returned.

"It was slightly depressing, because all of a sudden I was in the run-up to 70," she says. "But I'm not frightened of death, I'm actually scared of living too long. I wouldn't like to be in a state where it's not fun to be alive. Even if you don't get dementia, there's a point when life stops being fun, but until then, I'm happy just being me.

"Because I'm older, I do listen to the news and think, 'That's probably not going to work', but I really don't want to become one of those awful people who say, 'Well in my day...'. I think it sometimes, but I try not to say it out loud."

Orchards in the Oasis by Josceline Dimbleby is published in hardback by Quadrille, priced 25. To order, call the Yorkshire Post Bookshop on 0800 0153232 or online at www.yorkshirepostbookshop.com