Baroness Butler-Sloss, 75, is bounding up a staircase in the middle of the labyrinthine Palace of Westminster. I am panting behind her and she is telling me how much less hard she works now that she only attends the Lords and has cut back her other paid commitments.

It was barely two years ago that she resigned as the coroner looking into the death of Princess Diana - "They told me there wouldn't be a jury" - and for six years, until 2005, she was president of the Family Division of the High Court, a job which involved early mornings and long hours of meetings and administration ("I was essentially running a department"), quite apart from actually sitting as a judge.

We perch on a red bench outside Committee Room Two while the photographer sets up. "I wake up much more cheerful than when I was a judge," she says. "I do think of the future, and I do wonder how long I am likely to live, but I am a member of the Church of England and my attitude to death is that it will happen some time, and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

I get terribly worried when I forget things, but then I'll talk to a younger person and they won't be any better at remembering a name than I am, so I can relax again."

Inside the committee room, Conservative peer Baroness Trumpington, 86, who spent the war working at Bletchley Park, wonders aloud whether her height will make her look like "Mrs Obama next to the Queen" in the group portrait, while Lord Bramall, who is 85, repeatedly takes off and puts on some remarkably severe tortoiseshell spectacles, with an air of authority befitting a retired field marshal and former head of the British armed forces. Labour's Lord Paul, 78, arrives, distracted by the death the day before of his brother and preparing to fly to Calcutta to comfort his family.

"I get up at 5 or 5.30am and make myself a cup of tea before going to the office," says Lord Paul, who is still chairman of the global manufacturing group Caparo. "I'll be there until about 2pm, when I come to the House of Lords, though I try to be home for dinner with the family," he adds. "I am not sure I've become more wise over the years, although of course everyone learns from experiences, though your frustrations also add up."

Frustration is definitely a word conjured up by Lord Bramall, famously accused of hitting Lord Janner during a heated debate. "Of course I feel wiser than I was as a young man," he says, "but the older you get the more you realise you've seen it all before. I am intolerant of young men who think they have invented the wheel just because they haven't seen one before."

Lord Bramall also tries to exercise. "My last game of cricket was when I was 70 - the Lords against the Commons. You never know what is around the corner, but my advice to the young would be to hope life gives you a share of luck."

"I used to be a very strong tennis player," says Baroness Trumpington, "but the war intervened. I love my garden - I'm out there twice a day. But otherwise a lifelong love of luxury has prepared me well for old age."