Not many people can celebrate their first solo art exhibition at the same time as their hundredth birthday but that's what Peggy Shepperd of Port Navas will be doing this afternoon.

The remarkable centenarian will be holding an open house, replete with champagne, at the village hall which has been showcasing a selection of her paintings for the last week, and where she will also launch the second edition of a book she co-authored with her husband before his death.

As part of her big celebration, Peggy's sons have arranged the hire of a Morgan Sports Car for the day. The exhibition was their idea too, Peggy said, which will showcase "a lot of stuff we found in in the room where I paint."

A member of art groups in Coverack and Constantine, Peggy has exhibited work before but this is her first solo show, and features work right the way through from when she was 13, and a piece that won a prize when she was 17.

Peggy was born in Southfields, south west London, in 1916, but fell in love with Cornwall at a young age after holidays to Falmouth, which included frequent trips to the Lizard peninsula. On their way through Port Navas they would laugh at a house with peculiar looking, figurehead-type statues in the porch, and Peggy never thought that in later life she would buy the house and spend more than 35 years living there.

Born in the middle of an air raid during World War One, during which a Zeppelin was shot down, Peggy grew up in Wimbledon, and managed to secure a place studying medicine at Kings College Hospital, not an easy feat for a woman in 1930s London. While still a medical student she met her husband, who was also at King's studying dentistry.

She qualified as a doctor in 1940 and went to work at St Giles Hospital in London, where she stayed throughout the Second World War, including moving out to Surrey when the hospital was evacuated to a safer location.

She took a break from her career to have her two sons, and an interest in child psychology led her to retrain, before setting up a child guidance clinic.

Peggy first visited Cornwall after a flooded out Girl Guide camp meant her parents sent her to visit relatives in Devon for a holiday.

She said: "I saw a coach to Tintagel and just got on board. That was my first introduction to Cornwall."She added: "In spite of not having seen King Arthur or Merlin, I still found it a very interesting place."

Peggy and her husband bought their house in 1956, and she said they "used to spend most of our time at the weekends on the road, coming and going." Eventually they both retired, and in 1981 they finally moved to live in Port Navas full time.

The couple loved the village so much, they even wrote a book about it, The Story of Port Navas, first published in 1994 and now reissued with twice as much information and three times as many pictures.

The fact there is "always something going on" is part of what attracted Peggy to the village, along with the feeling of community and "people giving in as much as they take out."

Reflecting on reaching her milestone age, Peggy said: "I don't believe it quite honestly. When I was 70 I thought that was rather a dull age to be, and when I was 80 I didn't believe it. When I was 90 that was ridiculous, and as for 100, it's absurd."