What is everyone talking about this week: Longevity? I think farmers invented that...

Is it healthier to live in the country? So ran a BBC headline back in 2017 after new research suggested that living near major roads could increase one’s risk of dementia. Both air and noise pollution were cited as a possible cause: tiny particles, studies found, were getting inside the brain. The countryside was heralded as a potential exit strategy (‘less than a quarter of the UK population lives there, for a start,’ the Beeb gushed) and, since then, a number of Arcadian health retreats have sprung up across our green and pleasant land, catering to burnt-out or simply health-conscious city mice keen to recharge their batteries somewhere where they can see the stars.

To rest and relaxation, today’s power-brokers raise us longevity. No longer the sole preserve of elderly care, the L-word now compasses a market projected to be worth $27 trillion (£19.99 trillion) by 2030, with major investments into technologies designed to extend our time on Earth. Longevity has come to dominate both our medical and hospitality spheres. ‘Have you noticed,’ one friend asked, ‘how many London spas have rebranded as longevity labs?’ The presidential suite of Fitzrovia's Newman hotel, W1, has both a sauna and a cold plunge on its balcony. Meditation, sound baths and infrared therapy are no longer the accoutrements of the lifestyle guru alone, but also of the corporate stooge.

Yet all this is to ignore the true ingredients of longevity: Nature and togetherness. In Scotland, GPs regularly prescribe time in the great outdoors for those suffering from anxiety and depression: a greener life tends to beget a longer one. In Somerset and along the coast of Ireland, community saunas encourage strangers to forge friendships as they sweat it out together: a reminder that life is a lot more enjoyable with other people in it.

The longevity-industrial complex has tricked us into two false beliefs. The first is that we are dependent on devices to improve the very conditions that technology tends to worsen (stress, sleep, hypertension). The health-tech industry, projected to reach £700 billion by 2030, rarely does more than repackage time-old ideas as radical breakthroughs. Many of longevity’s principles — rise with the sun, eat organic, touch grass — are more or less the same as those which country folk have followed for centuries.

The second false belief is that longevity is a solo pursuit. I have always loved the statistic that loneliness kills more people each year than cigarettes, not because death is ever jolly, but because it recognises that companionship is equally as important as fitness. Why would anyone want to live forever if they’re to live forever, alone? The Romans, after all, spoke of carpe diem, not carpe vitam.

This feature originally appeared in the February 25, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.