The Time of Their Lives — When I get very old, I would like to live at the Mary Feilding Guild. The North London home for the "active elderly" has some rather distinguished retirees: Alison Selford, 87, a journalist and novelist; Rose Hacker, 101, a former sex therapist and current columnist; and Hetty Bower, 102, an antiwar activist.

"I always tell people I live in a home for aged intellectuals, but it's not entirely true," jokes Mrs. Selford, the niece of the writer Rebecca West. "I have not lost my marbles," she says, and it's true of all these mentally sprightly but physically deteriorated women, who keep busy with exercise, debating current events and even writing haiku. One says living a life of the mind is what has kept her lucid for so long.

These women have led full lives, and they have much to say about men, religion, life.

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