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The secret to a long life, you ask? According to a Jersey-born woman who just celebrated her 104th birthday, the answer may have something to do with sobriety, "luck"... and chocolate biscuits.
Lilian Renault née Maloret, now a grandmother of four and a great-grandmother of six, was born in Jersey in 1920 and was 20 years old when Nazi troops arrived in Jersey.
Mrs Renault – who now lives in the Otago region of New Zealand – told the Otago Daily Times that living to the age of 104 was down to "pure luck".
However, she admitted that her lifetime of sobriety and only having "one or two cigarettes, no more than that", may have contributed to her long life.
Mrs Renault's life has been "very busy and very active, and all done sober – that might be the secret," she said.
Pictured: The registration card of Lilian Renault, née Maloret, who was born in 1920. (Jersey Heritage)
Originally raised in St Helier, Mrs Renault was the oldest of six siblings.
When the Nazis invaded the island in 1940, she was just 20 years old.
Mrs Renault said that she remembered hosting a group of German officers in her living room.
It was during the Nazi occupation that then-Miss Maloret got married to Auguste Renault in 1943.
The couple had their first child, Michael, before leaving Jersey in March 1951.
They headed for New Zealand aboard the ship Rangitata on a six-week voyage thorough the Panama Canal.
The family eventually settled in Otago where they had their second son, Paul.
Mrs Renault has returned to Jersey twice in her life to see her siblings and friends who remained in the Channel Islands – once with her husband in 1980 and once on a solo trip in the early 2000s.
The 104-year-old still enjoys the good things in life, and sometimes sneaks away to the supermarket to pick up chocolate biscuits for impromptu afternoon teas.
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