‘We fetishised being young – it’s just stupid!’: Judi Dench and Richard Eyre on ageing, Covid and saving the NHS

‘I suppose if you’ve had your four score years and 10, you’re going to drop off the bough anyway’ … Judi Dench and Bally Gill during the filming of Allelujah. Photograph: Jem Rigby/Michael Guerrero

I live 10 minutes’ walk from a disused psychiatric hospital in north London. Well, partly disused: 40% of St Ann’s in Tottenham, with the glossy new assessment centre and low-rise 30s blocks, is still going strong. The other side of the site, built as a fever hospital in 1892, has been gradually abandoned.

There is a Victorian laundry, grand as an ocean liner. A massive castellated water tower, like the rook in a giant’s chess set. A gorgeous sprawl of red-brick wards and lodges, with shaped gables, stacked chimneys and blind boxes over intricate windows.