The varied career of Sally Greengross, who has died aged 86, included language tuition, a radio importing business, volunteering with young offenders, work as a magistrate, lecturing on European affairs and most importantly, her involvement with older people within the charity Age Concern, now part of Age UK.

For many years she was chief executive of the International Longevity Centre UK, a think tank she had established in 1997.

And just two days before her death she had written to former Prime Minister Boris Johnson asking for his support for a charity she had helped set up in 1993 to act on elder abuse, which became known as Hourglass.

She was born in Hendon, NW London, the only child of a secular Jewish couple, Harry and Estelle Rosengarten. She went to Brighton and Hove High School, where she showed an exceptional talent for languages and took her A-Levels early.

Not long after that, she moved to Paris and attended classes at the Sorbonne. There her contact with internationalism made her passionately ‘pro Europe’. She married Alan Greengross in 1959 and they had four children in less than four years and lived in London’s Notting Hill.

Sir Alan Greengross, became Conservative opposition leader on the Greater London Council in 1983, and fiercely but unsuccessfully campaigned against Margaret Thatcher’s plans to abolish it, which she did in 1986.

He was a lifelong Conservative activist on the liberal wing of the party and was knighted in 1986. He then turned to commercial interests and ran a precision engineering business.

For a while, Sally Greengross acted as a magistrate, primarily working in a voluntary capacity with young offenders. During the childhood of her offspring, she attended the London School of Economics to study sociology, politics and economics and graduated in 1972. She then continued research and occasionally gave lectures about European affairs. After that, she joined Age Concern England.

As assistant director, she forged links with organisations for older people across Europe. Indeed, she was an enthusiastic supporter of European integration.

She then became director and later director general of the organisation, and remained in this role until 2000, also serving as joint chair of Age Concern’s Institute of Gerontology at King’s College, London.

From 2002 till 2009, she was Age Concern’s vice-president until 2009,when it became part of Age UK.

It was from 2000 that she served for four years as the chair of the UK branch of the International Longevity Centre, becoming its chief executive and enabling it to produce expert analysis into the consequences of an ageing population for government, public services and industry, but also as a celebration of an active long life.

In 2000 she was elevated to the peerage by Prime Minister Tony Blair and from then till her death she was an independent crossbencher in the House of Lords and took advantage of this to promote ageing issues.

From 2006 till 2012, she was a founding commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and led an enquiry into the abuse of human rights in home care for the elderly and the disabled.

She had already been awarded an OBE in 1993 and later received nine honorary degrees. She also wrote and edited several books, including a best-seller: Living, Loving and Ageing: Sexual and Personal Relationships in Later Life, co-authored in 1989 with her late sister-in-law, the pioneering counsellor and agony aunt Wendy Greengross. And at the age of 81, she signed up with a personal trainer.

She and her husband Sir Alan Greengross also supported various charitable causes, including a project after the tsunami in 2004, aimed at helping the recovery of the fishing community in Sri Lanka.

Her family funds a creative, educational youth programme at the British Museum featuring talks and tours.

Her husband predeceased her in 2018. She is survived by her children Gail, Claire, Peter and Jo and nine grandchildren.

Sally Lady Greengross: born June 29, 1935. Died June 23, 2022.