Clara Meadmore was born in Glasgow in 1903 and made a decision at the age of 12 that she maintained until the last day of her life: she would never marry and never have a partner.
She lived through two world wars, worked as a secretary, served in the army in Egypt and retired alone in Cornwall. She was never short of marriage proposals, but rejected them all. “I was never interested in sex”, she confessed in an interview for her 105th birthday. For her, the secret was nothing mysterious: walking a lot, having a glass of wine from time to time and avoiding what she called “a mess”.
She died in 2011, at the age of 108, without ever identifying as asexual or feeling that she had missed out on anything. She was simply, in her own words, busy with other things.
