Perhaps no other individual has done more for the cause of older people in the UK and for raising awareness of the opportunities and challenges of growing longevity than Sally Greengross, Lady Greengross, who has died aged 86 of cancer. A life peer since 2000, who sat as a crossbencher, Greengross had in recent weeks stepped down as chief executive of the International Longevity Centre UK (ILC-UK), an influential thinktank she had established in 1997.
She wrote to the prime minister just two days before her death to ask for his support for a charity she had helped set up in 1993 as Action on Elder Abuse, now called Hourglass. “I am coming to the end of my life,” she said. “I am writing to you in the hope that you will help this important charity so that the work that I started all those years ago can be continued.”
