An amazing centenarian, who has lived through 20 Prime Ministers, five different monarchs and two world wars, has celebrated her 105th birthday.

Gladys Shrubsole received her second birthday card from The Queen yesterday, a full 105 years after she was born in Edwardian Derbyshire, in 1904.

The daughter of an ironmonger, Gladys was one of three children brought up in Ashbourne, near the Peak District National Park.

A former student at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, in Ashbourne, Gladys moved to Hertfordshire when she was 19 years old.

Gladys said: “I lived there [Ashbourne] until I was about 19 and I went to the grammar school there.

“Then I took a job in St Albans looking after two children. I had a happy life there and I stayed there until I met my husband and I got married.”

Gladys married her first husband, Alfred Satchell, a professional watchmaker, when she was 24 years old.

The pair then moved to Radlett, where they opened a jewellers in the Oak Way area of the village.

“My husband was a watchmaker and a jeweller and we had a shop there for a good many years,” Gladys said.

“We lived at the shop for a time, then we bought a garage in The Avenue and made a house out of it.

“We built onto it and made a nice three-bedroom house from it. Radlett was much smaller then, it was quite a different place.”

Sadly Alfred died after 43 years of marriage, but Gladys remarried and shared ten happy years with her second husband, Lawrence Shrubsole.

Gladys continued to live independently until past her 100th birthday, before moving to Abbeyfield, in Bushey.

Having reached the amazing age of 105, she admits she has seen a awful lot in her many years.

“I've seen the development of the car. I can remember when I was a little girl there were only about two people who had a car and we used to run outside when it went past.

“I remember when the R101 airship went over Radlett and the next thing we knew it had crashed near Paris and all those people died.”

She added: “I was at school during the World War 1, I was a schoolgirl.

“There was rationing then, but we always had plenty of food. Living in the farming district my father had plenty of friends who would send us joints and butter and things.”

Gladys says it was “very exciting” to open her second birthday card from The Queen, on her birthday on Sunday, having received the first when she turned 100.

However, Gladys she say she is unsure what the secret behind her long life is.

“I don't know really.

“I've led a busy life, a happy life too. I suppose that makes a difference.

“We were quite busy when we had the shop and we worked hard there, but I don't know the secret.”