Would anyone tell Helen Mirren she was too old and wrinkly to go on acting? Or suggest to David Hockney that he might as well bin his brushes because, at 88, he might conk out before he finished his latest painting? Surely not, that would be outrageously ageist.
In 2007 I wrote 'Making The Leap', an article for Law Gazette about my decision to quit a long career as a national newspaper and magazine journalist, to go back to university to study to become a solicitor. At that stage, I’d passed all the law exams but was failing dismally to persuade a firm to grant me a training contract. There was ‘no mileage’ left in an old girl of 60, a partner of one firm gently told me.
I soldiered on, teaching media law at a local journalism college.
Then, after my clever daughter completed a week of work experience in the legal department of Associated Newspapers before sailing into a magic circle firm for her all-expenses-paid training contract, I applied to do the same thing. And guess what? The oldest work experience student started 'legaling' copy as reporters at the Daily Mail, Mail Online and Metro churned it out. In no time I was in the office three days a week while sitting as a magistrate on one of the other days. Two years later, the head of legal offered me a training contract which, because of my long service as a JP, was reduced from two years to 18 months.
I gained a desk, a practising certificate and my life as a solicitor began.
After 10 years, though, at the age of 74 they wanted the desk back and we did a deal. I got some indemnity insurance and did a bit of freelance legal work. But nagging clients to pay up was just too tedious.
So, I went back to teaching media law to fledgling Times journalists while wondering what my next career should be. By that time, I’d had to stand down as a magistrate and found, annoyingly, that I was too old join the Parole Board or to become an assistant coroner. Instead, I trained to volunteer as an appropriate adult, holding the hands of juvenile suspects and the mentally vulnerable in a police custody suite, at the same time as sitting on referral panels for the Youth Offending Service. These aim to help young offenders stay out of court and prison.
On other days I wrote my first novel, ‘The Wrong Husband’, a legal thriller with what I hope are three-dimensional characters and an unusual plot. I couldn’t find an agent, let alone a publisher, despite my having written more than a dozen non-fiction books a couple of decades earlier. But at that time, I’d been a 'name' in newspapers and publishers rang me with offers. Now, apparently, I was just an old person with unrealistic ambitions.
Finally, I found wonderful Danielle Wrate, a small, independent publisher, who edited the manuscript, oversaw the cover design, uploaded the book on to Amazon and made it available at Waterstones and other bookshops. Now I’m writing a second novel.
My advice to anyone fed up with running a business, being an accountant, managing a restaurant or a medical practice is to make your leap into whatever career you’ve long thought about. Forget early retirement. You’ll bore yourself to death with golf and gardening. Use some of your savings to tide you over for a few years. Age may be 'just a number' but it’s not an unbreakable barrier. And 60 is so last year.
If you want it, go for it. And read ‘The Wrong Husband’ on the journey.
Hilary Kingsley was an author, journalist and critic (for The Daily Mirror, The Times, YOU magazine and many other magazines) before studying law
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