‘Should there be a retiring age for writers?’ Discuss

‘You writers never retire, do you?’ said the guest at the party condescendingly. ‘“Scribble, scribble, scribble, right to the end,” as Edward Gibbon said.’ ‘No,’ said I, ‘it was said to Gibbon, either by George III or the Duke of Gloucester, accounts differ.’ ‘Quite a know-all, aren’t you?’ the man said. ‘But my point is this: there’s no retiring age for writers, and perhaps there ought to be.’

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Rupert Darwall

Labour has walked into a net-zero trap of its own making

I might well second that wish, ill-natured though it was. I recall vividly V.S. Pritchett, then in his late eighties, telling me how he had to drag himself, groaning and cursing, up the high stairs to his study at the top of the house every morning to do his daily stint. And there was J.B. Priestley, on the eve of his 90th birthday (he didn’t quite make it) grumbling to me that he was still at it, with the Inland Revenue still bombarding him with letters.