Original Mayr Medical Resort

I had never thought much about longevity or even ageing. But once you hit your mid-50s, things shift in irritating ways: love handles become more stubborn, typefaces mysteriously blur, sports injuries take ages to heal and conversations in noisy restaurants start to become puzzles. You haven’t fallen apart but the factory settings no longer apply, and Philip Larkin’s poems increasingly seem more poignant than funny. I apparently am not the only man of a certain age to have had this realisation. Last September, at an autocrats’ conclave in Beijing, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, both 72, wondered aloud if they might be able to extend their lives and therefore prolong