Chocolate and romantic novels are the key to a long life, according to 100-year-old Rose Waller.

A London girl by birth, Rose celebrated her birthday at Abbcross Nursing Home with Mayor of Havering Cllr Melvin Wallace.

And the home’s manager Helen Field believes she has discovered Rose’s secret.

“We joke about the secrets of a long life,” she said. “She does love chocolate, and she’s an avid reader of Mills and Boon books. She’s read them all, probably several times.

“She’s been in this home just over four years. She’s lovely – she’s a really cheerful, happy lady, very gentle and nice.”

Rose was born in the Old Ford Road area of Bow in April 1912. During the war, she worked at the Briggs Munitions factory in Dagenham, where she lived with her husband Charlie and their two children.

“I think it runs in the family,” said her son John Waller, 79. “My grandmother, her mother, got to 96.

“I take a box of chocolates every time I visit her. She can’t have hard food so I bring her the ones with soft centres that melt in the mouth.”