Liz Earle: ‘I was nervous about going public turning 60’
She’s the queen of wellbeing and author of 35 books on how to live our best life, who sold her eponymous Liz Earle beauty company to Avon in 2010, who then sold it to the owner of high-street chemist Boots in 2015 for ￡140 million.
So why has Liz Earle spent much of the past few months researching the impacts of lockdown on Britain’s most deprived communities for a landmark Two Nations report for the Centre for Social Justice, with “big cheeses” (as she describes them) including Lord King (former head of the Bank of England) and political grandees from Iain Duncan Smith to Andy Burnham and Miriam Cates?
“I’m not political with a capital P, but I do feel passionately that we should never be locked down again,” she says, Christmas lights shimmering behind her as an open fire roars. “I have worked with the Centre for Social Justice for years; my charity LiveTwice, which gives people a second chance, has supported their work with small charities and I can see that the consequences of lockdown have been disastrous – particularly for children and women and the poorest in our society.”
But isn’t that all being dealt with at vast expense by the current Covid Inquiry? She shakes her head.
“The current Covid Inquiry has been more about the blame-game between politicians, going through their WhatsApps rather than assessing the impact of lockdown on the most disadvantaged, or questioning whether the social harms it led to were worth it, which in my opinion – having spent months assessing the evidence – they definitely were not.”
In person, Liz Earle MBE is softly spoken and warm with a quick intelligence. Her London studio flat, where she spends a few days a week (her main home is a farm in the West Country), is all gilt mirrors and plush sofas, but she is reassuringly down to earth, greeting me with hair wet from the shower and no make-up. “A team are arriving to blow-dry me and make me up live on Instagram,” she laughs, aware of the privileged nature of her life. But when it comes to the Two Nations report she is deadly serious.
“Despite the known traumas lockdowns caused, the Covid Inquiry is yet to look at the effect on young people, particularly the poorest ones, and with the final report not due until summer 2026 by then it will be too late. We are sitting on a ticking physical and mental health timebomb.”
Many other experts agree. The day after we speak the news is full of reports about a spike in mortality especially among people aged 50-64, with lifestyle factors including cardiovascular disease, liver disease and diabetes, which were all exacerbated by lockdown. When I ask her what she brought to the research she is typically self-deprecating, remarking that “A lot of the report was way above my pay grade, but I did bring some basic humanity and understanding of family life, particularly as a working mum with school-age and university-age kids.”
That is way too modest. Earle is not only an Instagram influencer with more than 200,000 followers, but a mother of five and a self-made millionaire entrepreneur. “The think tank was interested in the impact on midlife women, which is very much my constituency, and I am also passionate about how tough the lockdown was for small businesses. I had to pivot my business fast or we would have gone down during the pandemic. Honestly, it was so close.”
After selling her beauty business, which started life on the Isle of Wight, Earle returned to journalism – she began her career writing about nutrition, wellbeing and health as deputy beauty editor on Women’s Journal in her 20s – and set up Liz Earle Wellbeing magazine and a broader lifestyle business while also appearing regularly on TV. Before the pandemic struck, Liz Earle Wellbeing magazine was on the checkout at Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s and WH Smith and selling nearly 100,000 copies a month, but when lockdown happened “no one could buy the magazine – we had to pulp 70,000 copies which was a huge loss. We had to change strategy fast to printing-on-demand and switch to a subscribers-only mode, sending it straight to customers. It was a very scary and hairy time.”
Earle’s was not the only business to be hit hard by lockdown. The Two Nations report outlines in grim detail the divide between the haves and have-nots in the UK in Dickensian terms, particularly the economic impact on the country (worse than the 2008 banking crisis) and on small businesses and those at the bottom of society with the most insecure jobs. (An extra 1.2 million people went on working-age benefits during lockdown and a household became homeless every three minutes).
The impact is still being felt: nine million people are economically inactive as a result of the lockdown, with the welfare system topping up the wages of over two million people. The number of people who are economically inactive because of long-term sickness has risen to 2.6 million (up 500,000 since Covid) with half of those reporting depression, bad nerves or anxiety.
Behind the brutal economic facts the human cost is colossal, and through her engagement with millions on social media, Earle saw it first-hand. “Lockdown was such a weird and scary time. I remember being at home at the beginning of it, having lunch with my family. I’d never done an Instagram Live story before but I just flipped on the camera and started to talk about how I was feeling and asking my audience what was going on with them.
“I have always been known for wellbeing advice so I chatted about the importance of getting fresh air, doing some exercise, eating well, and most of all turning off the news. That daily death count just created pervasive fear, a cortisol spike. It was so bad for mental health. I chatted online for 30 minutes and had tons of messages asking if I would do it again the next day, saying it had been a real lifeline.”
Earle and her younger brother were born and raised in Portsmouth (their father was an admiral). After attending the local comprehensive, she studied hotel management and catering at Westminster College – something she says stood her in good stead when she began writing books about healthy cooking. After college, her first job was working for Molton Brown, where she met her future co-founder Kim Buckland and first became interested in wellness, living better and nutrition – way ahead of her time. They set up Liz Earle Beauty Co Ltd in 1995.
With her background in health, at the start of lockdown in 2020 she began to do a lunchtime Instagram Live story, continuing every day for the next 16 weeks. Her community grew rapidly as she offered “calm, rationality and balance; I wanted to create unity as lockdown stoked so much division – economic and social. I became so aware of the fear out there, particularly for midlife women who were trying to hold their families together, do homeschooling and deal with their children’s anxiety.”
This was familiar territory for Earle, whose children range in age from 32 and 30 (her two eldest come from her first marriage to an investment banker) to 22, 21 and 13, from her second marriage of 30 years.
“Our report shows that in older children, one in four will be diagnosed with a mental health condition. Anyone who has had a mentally ill teen understands the toll that takes on the whole family.”
Most troubling, she thinks, is the hangover from the pandemic that will impact people for years to come.
“During our research for the Two Nations report we heard about infants with huge speech delays, because after they were born their mothers were isolated; there were babies who couldn’t use their mouths to smile because they had never seen a smile; eight-year-olds with the social skills of a five-year-old because they hadn’t been socialised. It was terrible for young mums who had to give birth in hospital, without their husbands being present because of the lockdown rules. How inhumane was that? We are only now starting to count the cost of all those missed opportunities.”
She is particularly passionate about the impact on Gen Z, the most anxious generation on record. “I can see the impact of lockdown on my own youngsters, and we were the lucky ones – we had resources and a garden and each other.” Earle talks about how one of her children’s friends “died by suicide during lockdown; anxiety levels were extreme and still are”.
“Gen Z are just so anxious – they are all full of fear and uncertainty because they missed out on so much and what they went through was so unprecedented.”
The report found that between April and December 2020 daily calls to the NSPCC’s emergency helpline doubled. We talk about how those lockdown teens, who spent two formative years essentially alone or at home, are now having a hard time dealing with university or work. How the result is a generation raised in isolation and on screens, who lack the social skills the rest of us take for granted.
The biggest takeaway from the report is how the poorest in our society were hit the hardest by the lockdowns. The report outlines worrying levels of inequality in the UK, with the most deprived children spending 52 per cent more time in front of a screen per day and doing a third less exercise, and the educational attainment gap increasing again after years of improvement.
As a mother, Earle zeroes in on the toll on families: “A third of all addicts relapsed during the lockdown,” she says. “Just think of the human suffering and collateral damage of that.”
Even more terrifying is the data the report has unearthed about the rise in domestic abuse during the pandemic. One domestic violence hotline received a 700 per cent increase in calls; women, who make up three-quarters of the victims, were trapped with their abusers 24 hours a day. “I knew about that at the time,” says Earle sadly. “I had so many direct messages from women in my community telling such sad stories about their situations.”
Between March 23 and April 12 2020 there were 14 domestic abuse killings of women and two of children. Lady Victoria Hervey’s description of her sister’s allegedly violent, coercive marriage during this period is just another apparent example of how pervasive this kind of behaviour is.
It wasn’t just online. Earle’s own 30-year marriage finally broke down during the pandemic. “Like so many others, I was going through a divorce myself. I had to live with my ex during that time because of the lockdown rules. Luckily we quite like each other and we get on well. But it wasn’t easy.”
Later this spring, Earle will publish her 36th book, A Better Second Half: How to Dial Back Your Age to Live a Longer, Healthier and Happier Life – which is all about late-life blossoming. “I am happier at 60 than I have ever been. I have more energy, feel fitter, and my ambition is to be even better at 70. I’m set on reaching 120 – that’s conservative in terms of longevity science now; bio-hackers are heading for 180.”
It doesn’t have to be expensive, she insists. What would she suggest? She points to simple life hacks she has seen work on her own body, including eating more protein, vegetables, good fats and fermented food (yup, kefir is your friend), starting the day with a cold shower, lifting weights to keep muscle tone and prevent osteoporosis and avoiding sugar at all costs (“it is inflammatory and ageing”).
“I am passionate about this advice being inclusive, I am aware there are people in this country who don’t have access to a kitchen to cook fresh vegetables. We need everyone to embrace these messages about how to be healthier, without being patronising. Britain lags behind other Western countries when it comes to preventative health initiatives.”
But even the queen of positive ageing feels the cultural pressure around getting older as a woman, admitting that gendered ageism is real. “I was nervous about going public turning 60,” she says with a grimace. “I wanted to go and hide, keep it quiet. But my team had me posing in a pink-marabou jumpsuit surrounded by Happy 60th Birthday balloons on the front of my Liz Earle Wellbeing magazine instead. You’ve got to feel the fear and do it anyway, right?”
Earle keeps herself busy – we squeezed in our interview between multiple filming and speaking engagements. She has a large Instagram following, nearly 50,000 followers on YouTube and a 400-episode-strong Liz Earle Wellbeing podcast – so I can’t help but wonder why she has devoted so much time to campaigning for social justice. Her answer reveals that she shares that Great Generation sense of noblesse oblige; her interest in helping those less well-off than herself is true one-nation conservatism in action.
“Those of us who have a lot need to be aware of entitlement issues and realise we have a duty to put back into our society, a duty of care to those less well-off than ourselves – whether that is volunteering for things like Meals on Wheels or other small charities who make such a difference in our communities but have massive funding issues.
“We need to raise awareness about the huge divisions in our society. For many of us who are better off, it is hard to imagine what life is like for the most marginalised and the extreme pressures they are under. The epidemic of mental illness. But it matters to all of us. Did you know that 6 per cent of families are behind half of all criminal convictions?”
The report is all about how in a society with less money to spend post-recession we need to work smarter, particularly about getting those with complex histories of poverty, family breakdown, drug issues and crime back into work – something Iain Duncan Smith, who founded the Centre for Social Justice, has been passionate about for decades. “This is social justice in action,” explains Earle.
“I agreed to be a commissioner on this because it was about coming together. My fellow commissioners came from across the political spectrum but there was great unity in the diagnosis.” The commission’s policy suggestions from its report will be published in March. “We live in an age in which online algorithms drive us to extremes, but it is in the middle, when we come together on the detail to work out how to solve an issue which affects us all, that true change and compromise is possible.”
Since we are talking about the big issues of the day I wonder where she, as a business owner, writer but also mother of Gen Zs, sits on the working-from-home debate?
“It is very important for teams to get together in person post-lockdown, particularly for young people who have communication issues and social anxiety – it is important to get them back in the room. I make sure my editorial teams get together at least twice a week. They need that in-person contact.”
And since she is jumping into political waters, what does she think Rishi Sunak’s chances are of re-election? She smiles, “I suspect he won’t do it. But I also think Keir Starmer’s majority will be far smaller than he might think.” With that, she is off. Her blow-dry beckons.
Eleanor Mills is the Founder of noon.org.uk – home of the Queenager.