Philip Mayne

Philip Mayne (22 November 1899 – 9 April 2007) was an English centenarian who was thought to have been the last surviving British officer of the First World War until his death at 107.

He won a scholarship to Christ's Hospital and then to King's College, Cambridge, but the First World War intervened.

Attending a training camp in Wales, he caught the Spanish flu, and was not fit to be sent to the front before the war ended.

Mayne was demobilised on 24 December 1918, and attended Cambridge University from January 1919, having missed only the first term of his first year.

Mayne attributed his longevity to a healthy lifestyle claiming that "I have never had too much to drink and have always cycled, swum and gardened".