THERE were smiles all round at an Oswestry care home on Wednesday, as one of its residents celebrated turning 100.

Veteran Malcolm Morris, who has lived at New Fairholme in Shrewsbury Road for the past four years, has enjoyed a week full of celebrations with his family and friends, to mark the special occasion.

Malcolm, who was born in Melbourne on October 30,1919, moved to Oswestry in 1992, with his first wife Moyra – the mother of his three daughters, Christine, Deirdre and Tessa.

The move came after Australian-born Malcolm, had attended university in Grenoble in France; moved to the UK to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford and lived a life full of travelling and living in far-flung locations around the world, including Laos and Burma, and even surviving being shot.

"I've had some very interesting times," said Malcolm. There's lots of stories I could tell you.

"I've had all sorts of adventures and adjustments to make. I was shot once!"

One story Malcolm tells, is being sent to hospital during the Second World War after he was wounded.

And it was while he was on the ward he saw somebody with a drip – which he subsequently found out was somebody trialling antibiotics not long after they were discovered.

"I'd never seen one before," said Malcolm. "I asked them what was going on and they said, 'we are trialling something new called antibiotics'."

Before living in Oswestry, Malcolm had joined the British Army in 1939, and in 1945 he was seconded to the Australian Government for special duty, being formally appointed as an external affairs cadet in the Australian Diplomatic Service.

His Foreign Service career took him to Berlin and then Bonn, before Malcolm settled back at home in Canberra, Australia for a couple of years.

But he would not stay put for long, as he then spent four years living in Delhi, India, before going on to be the Australian Ambassador to Austria in Vienna and then the ambassador to South Vietnam in Saigon.

His ambassador duties did not stop there, as he then went on to be ambassador to Pakistan, followed by Afghanistan, with his final posting before his retirement in 1980, as ambassador to the German Democratic Republic.

At the ripe old age of 85, Malcolm married his second wife, Denyse, who he had met aged 19 and fell in love with while living in France.

Denyse was only 16 at the time and the war was to separate them.

Both went on to marry other people and have children but their love would be rekindled.

In 2002, while on a road trip around France, Moyra passed away.

A few years later, Malcolm went to visit Denyse and her daughters and the friendship was rekindled.

It was after that he proposed to Denyse and moved to France where they spent 10 happy years together before she died in 2015, which meant he moved back to the UK to be closer to his daughters.

Now happy in the care home, Malcolm speaks fondly of his new home in Oswestry and of his shock at reaching the ripe old age of 100.

"I've been well looked after here," he added. "They've been very kind to me here from my first day onwards. They're really good to me.

"I can hardly believe I've made it to 100.

"When people said to me you're approaching 100, I thought 'I wont make it that long'. But here I am."

And what does Malcolm say is the key to a happy long life?

"Look ahead," he said. "She what's coming up and be sensible about it. Don't worry about it. Just take it as it comes."