Eleanor Mills spent 23 years at The Sunday Times as an editor, writer and interviewer, and she has talked to everyone from the Dalai Lama to Sheryl Sandberg. She was also a truth teller from the age of five, when her dad would take her aside before lunch guests arrived and say, “Darling, no remarks.”

Then one day she was called into a meeting where there was a box of tissues on the table. Her career, her status and her identity went in a single morning, just as the world shut down in March 2020. Instead of going back to newspapers, she built Noon, a community for women in midlife, and gave us the word Queenager.

In this honest, funny and very human conversation, Eleanor talks about what it was really like to be a young woman in a newsroom, what it feels like when the cloak of power comes off, and why she believes the end of one life is the beginning of something better. This episode contains strong language.

In this episode we cover

• Growing up a “truth teller” and why women who speak up are so often told to be quiet
• What it was like to be a young woman in a newsroom, and the price of admission
• Interviewing the Dalai Lama and Sheryl Sandberg
• Chairing Women in Journalism and mentoring hundreds of young women
• The day she was made redundant: the tissues, the tugboat and the sense of a car crash
• Losing her identity and the “cloak of power”, and what she found underneath
• The trip to Jamaica that changed her direction
• Why she called her company Noon
• What a Queenager is, and why we needed a new word
• The “midlife clusterfuck” and Noon’s research with Accenture on the big life events many women face by 50
• The myth of Inanna, the figure of eight and going “through the eye of the midlife needle”
• Finding joy again through swimming in the pond
• Rethinking work, money and age in a 100-year life
• What is next for Noon

About Eleanor Mills

Eleanor Mills is a journalist, author and founder of Noon.

Eleanor is the UK’s premier expert on “midlife”. She founded NOON.org.uk, a media platform and 50k plus community of midlifers, to change the narrative around ageing. After all, in the 100 year life, 50 is only halfway through. It’s noon, lunchtime, and midlife isn’t a crisis but a chrysalis when we finally get to become the people we always wanted to be. Building on this mission, her first book on midlife, Much More to Come: Lessons on the Mayhem and Magnificence of Midlife (2024), is a Times bestseller.

Prior to setting up Noon, Eleanor was Editorial Director of The Sunday Times and Editor of The Sunday Times Magazine. Known as one of the most high profile journalists of her generation and a top flight interviewer, she has interrogated everyone from Mikhail Gorbachev to Sheryl Sandberg, David Cameron to One Direction, Theresa May to the Dalai Lama. She still writes regularly for UK newspapers and magazines and appears as a broadcaster on TV and radio.

Connect with Eleanor

• Noon: https://noon.org.uk/
• Instagram: @uponnoon
• Email: eleanor@noon.org.uk
• Book: Much More to Come, published by HarperCollins: https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/much-more-to-come-eleanor-mills?variant=56328100610427
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eleanor-mills-88a8a827/

About Fran

Fran Willoughby is an intuitive mentor and coach, evidential medium, Reiki practitioner and the host of The Power of the Truth. Through Mojo Motivator she offers mediumship readings, oracle card readings, Reiki healing and coaching, helping people find clarity, connection and confidence through life’s biggest transitions. Find out more or book a session at www.mojo-motivator.com.

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