ld age is a massacre,” wrote Philip Roth, long before the pandemic underscored its hazards. Even those who count as young must often watch the ineluctable drift of loved ones into decrepitude. Andrew Steele has a hopeful message for all those facing this prospect (ie, everyone). Old age needn’t be a massacre; in fact, old age needn’t even be old.

Mr Steele’s thesis in “Ageless” is that ageing can be cured—and, at least in part, that it very soon will be. The giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands show no age-related decline, in some ways seeming as youthful at 170 as at 30. Mr Steele thinks this phenomenon, known as negligible senescence, is within humanity’s grasp, too.

Whether or not readers are persuaded that ageless humans could ever be more than a theoretical possibility—and it is a stretch—this book will convince them that discounting the theoretical possibility altogether is based on nothing but prejudice. Western art may have something to do with it, bristling as it is with morality tales about the folly of wanting to turn back the clock; but there is actually no good reason to assume an upper limit to longevity, or that ageing must come with decline. And there is quite a lot of evidence to the contrary. Without the rich world’s denizens really noticing, a life that ends after the biblical three score years and ten has already come to seem a life cut short; instead, 90 is now seen as a good innings.

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