When Henry Kerr met an attractive younger woman, he feared she wouldn't give an older man a second glance.
So he embarked on a four-year campaign to win over the object of his affections, writing her love poetry and spending hours exchanging life stories.
And yesterday, 97-year- old Mr Kerr proved you can't hurry love, when he finally wed his younger companion - Valerie Berkowitz, 87.
Wedded bliss: Henry Kerr, aged 97 dances with Valerie Berkowitz, aged 87 on the occasion of their marriage
He said: 'I would have asked her much earlier, if I had thought such an attractive, witty young lady of 87 would have anything to do with an old codger like me.'
Mr Kerr believed his love life was over following his wife Gladys's death in 2004, but said he was 'struck like a thunderbolt' when he met Mrs Berkowitz at the North London care home they share.
He said: 'I thought she found me pushy and conceited - until she acquired an analytical interest in the poems I read at the poetry circle I founded when I moved in here. Then we found our affinities.'
Happy couple: Henry Kerr and Valerie Berkowitz are a delighted pair on their wedding day
When they started talking, the pair discovered they had both lived in South Africa, and both had families scattered across the world.
He wrote several love poems in an attempt to win her affections.
Mr Kerr, who moved to the care home in 2006 when he was 94, said: 'When I did ask her to marry me a few months ago she went hysterical - she put her head down on the table and couldn't stop laughing.'
Even once Mrs Berkowitz had accepted the proposal, the couple expected to stay permanently engaged to avoid the ' complication' of marriage.
But Mr Kerr, who ran an investment company before retirement, said: 'I felt people were whispering behind their hands and gossiping about us moving in together, and that it was important for us to be Mr and Mrs.'
The couple finally married in a traditional Jewish ceremony yesterday at their care home in Golders Green, followed by a high tea for 90 guests.
The newlyweds, who have six children, 19 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren between them, will embark on a one-day honeymoon today but plan to keep its location a secret.
The new Mrs Kerr, a former biochemist and counsellor whose first husband Abraham died in 2005 at the age of 82, said: 'Almost immediately after Henry arrived at the home, we started gravitating towards each other, from breakfast on.
'He is so totally talented and full of fun, yet also very serious.
'He's different from my late husband in every way, except that they both had enormous brain power. It's absolutely incredible that we found each other so late in life and that we are so loving - and lovely - together.
'We go to museums and galleries and theatres in groups - but we are off for a day trip honeymoon all by ourselves, and are thinking about a cruise.'
Mr and Mrs Kerr will keep their two rooms at the home, although they will use one as a bedroom and another as a study.
The couple have also walked away with the title of Britain's oldest newlyweds - previously held by Les Atwell, 94, and Sheila Walsh, 87.
- No10 says 'We lament any leaks' as White House slams breach
- UK Security Minister fears British soldiers are now at greater risk
- But Wikileaks says: Don't shoot the messenger
- Documents reveal British forces killed 16 Afghan children 'in error'
- Special forces 'black' squads hunt Taliban leaders
- French soldiers shot at a bus full of schoolchildren
- Polish troops killed wedding party in mortar attack
- Taliban target aircraft with deadly heat-seeking missiles
This fresh-faced analyst could be responsible for leaking a massive file of secret military documents revealing chilling details of the Afghanistan war and civilian deaths.
Army intelligence expert Bradley Manning, 22, boasted he had downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents, according to computer hacker Adrian Lamo.
He is said to have contacted Lamo out of the blue and then claimed he had saved high-security files onto CDs, ready to hand to Wikileaks, while pretending to listen to Lady Gaga.
'Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public,' he apparently told Lamo.
The hacker got in touch with the U.S. military and later met with them in Starbucks to hand over a printout of his conversations with Manning.
Responsible? Left, Sgt Bradley Manning. Right, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in London today
The analyst has already been charged over a separate leak of a classified helicopter cockpit video earlier this month.
It showed U.S. soldiers laughing as they gunned down Afghan civilians and two journalists in a firefight in Baghdad in 2007. He was picked up in Iraq, where he was working.
Manning is said to be locked up in a military prison after being shipped across the border to Kuwait. He faces trial by court martial and, if found guilty, a heavy jail sentence.
Lamo believes Manning did not work alone, saying he did not have ‘the technological expertise’ to carry out the gathering and leaking of the documents.
'I believe somebody would have had to have been of assistance to him,’ he said.
In a disclosure that has dismayed Downing Street and the White House, the website has published the files and handed them over in full to three national newspapers in three different countries.
Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence refused to comment on the contents of the documents but a No10 spokesman said: 'We would lament all unauthorised releases of classified material.'
Security Minister Baroness Neville-Jones described the leak as 'really serious'.
'If you stop to think about it for a moment, military systems have to be secure because people's lives are at stake,' she said.
Toll: An Afghan girl in hospital in Helmand after being injured by coalition forces in an air strike in 2007
The secret documents suggest that coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in incidents that have never been reported. They include claims that 16 children were among the civilians shot or bombed in error by British troops.
They also reveal how a secret 'black' unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for 'kill or capture' without trial and show that the U.S. covered up evidence the Taliban had acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.
NATO FORCES KILL 45 CIVILIANS
At least 45 civilians, many women and children, were killed in a rocket attack by the NATO-led foreign force in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province last week, the Afghan government has revealed.
The incident happened in Helmand's Sangin district on Friday when civilians crammed into a mud-built house to flee fighting between NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops and Taliban insurgents, Siyamak Herawi told Reuters.
Reports of civilian deaths and casualties caused by foreign troops are a major cause of friction between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Western backers and often lead to street demonstrations.
If confirmed, the Sangin incident would be among the worst of its kind during the war. At least 30 civilians were killed in a NATO air strike called in by German forces in northern Kunduz in September last year.
A spokesman for ISAF said the alliance had conducted an operation against insurgents in Sangin on Friday and was investigating the reports of civilian deaths.
'We have an assesment team there right now,' Major Michael Johnson told Reuters.
Civilians were also wounded in the attack, Herawi said after a separate investigation by the Afghan government was completed.
'The investigation shows that the rocket was fired by NATO and 45 civilians, many of them women and children, have been killed,' he said.
Other disclosures include how the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets and that the Taliban has escalated its roadside bombing campaign which has claimed 2,000 lives to date.
The documents detail coalition troops shooting unarmed drivers and civilian motorcyclists because they are terrified that they could be Taliban suicide bombers.
In one incident never before reported, French troops shot at a bus full of children because it had come too close to a military convoy.
Eight children were wounded in the attack, which took place in the village of Tangi Kalay, near Kabul, in 2008.
Other reports record how a U.S. patrol machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers.
And they show how Polish troops mortared a village in 2007, killing a wedding party including a pregnant woman, in what was apparently a revenge attack.
Colonel Stuart Tootal, who commanded 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment in Helmand Province in 2006, said the information 'could impact on the security of our soldiers'.
He said Nato forces in Afghanistan now put a 'huge emphasis' on avoiding civilian casualties and played down the relevance of the leak.
Col Tootal told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: 'I think we have to really caution that this is going to be seen as more bad news coming out of Afghanistan.
'In terms of the general themes, nothing we are finding out from these reports is new. There have been significant changes on the ground that have occurred only this summer.'
Colonel Richard Kemp, another former head of UK forces in Afghanistan. added: 'It's potentially damaging to operational security. But I think at the same time it's important people understand how difficult it is.'
The White House has condemned the leak and claimed that the publication of details from the secret documents could put lives at risk.
'We strongly condemn the disclosure of classified information, which puts the lives of the U.S. and partner service members at risk and threatens our national security,' a U.S. Government spokesman told the Guardian newspaper, which published the files.
'Wikileaks made no effort to contact the U.S. government about these documents, which may contain information that endanger the lives of Americans, our partners, and local populations who cooperate with us.'
In April, Wikileaks published extracts from this 2007 video showing U.S. soldiers shooting civilians in Baghdad. U.S. intelligence analyst Bradley Manning is now being held for allegedly mishandling and leaking the data
Another still from the video shows Afghans falling as U.S. soldiers encourage each other to keep shooting
WikiLeaks has delayed the releases of another 15,000 reports for 'harm minimisation' but plans to publish them in full later as the security situation in Afghanistan allows.
Its founder Julian Assange today defended their publication and insisted they had taken steps to avoid increasing the security risk.
He compared the material to the opening of the East German secret police archives.
'We are familiar with groups whose abuse we expose attempting to criticise the messenger to distract from the power of the message,' he said at a press conference in London.
'We don't see any difference in the White House's response to this case to the other groups that we have exposed.
'We have tried hard to make sure that this material does not put innocents at harm. All the material is over seven months old so is of no current operational consequence, even though it may be of very significant investigative consequence.'
WHAT IS WIKILEAKS?
Wikileaks was set up in 2007 by journalist and computer programmer Julian Assange (pictured).
Mr Assange said he wanted to allow whistleblowers, journalists and activists to publish sensitive materials without fear of being identified.
His parents met at a demonstration against the Vietnam war. As a teenager, his mother rode into city hall on a horse to protest against the closing of pony trails.
Mr Assange has refused repeated requests by the U.S. intelligence agencies to meet them on 'neutral territory' to discuss his sources.
His website's complex setup is designed to ensure that information sent to it is anonymised before it is passed to the web servers.
Its servers are spread all over the world and do not keep logs, so governments and other organisations cannot trace where the information is being sent and received from.
Even so, WikiLeaks encourages donors of sensitive material to post the material to them on CDs, over encyrypted internet connections or from netcafes.
They say this is so that even if WikiLeaks were infiltrated by a government intelligence agency, submitters could not be traced.
WikiLeaks claims that so far none of the thousands of its sources have been exposed, via WikiLeaks or any other method. It also runs a network of lawyers and others to defend its publications and their sources.
Mr Assange added: 'It's clear that it will shape an understanding of what the past six years of war has been like, and that the course of the war needs to change. The manner in which it needs to change is not yet clear.'
He said the files were not about one single horrific event but the bigger picture of the conflict, now into its ninth year.
'The real story of this material is that it is war, it's one damn thing after another,' he said. 'It's the continuous small events, the continuous deaths of children, insurgents, allied forces, the millions of people.'
Mr Assange said WikiLeaks had 'no reason' to doubt the reliability of the files, but cautioned that they presented only a partial picture.
He said: 'You will find that the US military units when self-reporting of course often speak in self-exculpatory language, redefine civilian casualties as insurgent casualties, downplay the number of casualties. And we know this by comparing these reports to the public record for where there has been comprehensive investigation.'
The files the site has released record in sometimes harrowing detail the toll the conflict has taken on the Afghan people.
Many of the reports - compiled by American forces - implicate British troops in unexplained attacks on civilians.
One report refers to a cluster of four British shootings on the streets of Kabul within the space of barely a month, in October and November 2007.
The shootings culminate in the killing of the son of an Afghan general by British forces.
Of one shooting, the Americans compiling the report wrote: 'Investigation is controlled by the British. We not able [sic] to get the complete story.'
A second cluster of civilian shootings, all involving Royal Marine commandos in the ferociously fought-over Helmand province, took place in a six-month period at the end of 2008.
When asked about these allegations, the Ministry of Defence told the Guardian: 'We have been unable to corroborate these claims in the short time available and it would be inappropriate to speculate on specific cases without further verification of the alleged actions.'
At least 195 civilians are admitted to have been killed and 174 wounded in the Afghanistan conflict so far and the six-year war has cost the lives of more than 320 British servicemen.
The publication of the files comes as concerns grow that President Obama's 'surge' strategy is failing.
Difficult relationship: Soldiers talking with villagers in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan (file photo)
Tensions: A U.S. army soldier frisking an Afghan villager during a patrol in Kandahar
The war logs suggest that America has covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.
They lay bare the horrifying extent of the carnage caused by the Taliban's roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.
And they paint a chaotic picture of events on the ground, with many civilian deaths prompting little investigation or recording.
In a statement, the White House insisted the chaotic records were the result of 'under-resourcing' under Obama's predecessor.
The spokesman told The Guardian: 'It is important to note that the time period reflected in the documents is January 2004 to December 2009.'
But human rights groups last night said the files showed a systematic attempt to cover up details of civilian casualties and a lack of accountability.
Rachel Reid, who investigates civilian casualty incidents in Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch, told the Guardian: 'These files bring to light what's been a consistent trend by US.. and Nato forces: the concealment of civilian casualties.
'Despite numerous tactical directives ordering transparent investigations when civilians are killed, there have been incidents I've investigated in recent months where this is still not happening.
'Accountability is not just something you do when you are caught. It should be part of the way U.S. and Nato do business in Afghanistan every time they kill or harm civilians.'
Last night the Guardian defended its publication of the files, saying the material published was not 'militarily sensitive' and that no fee had been paid for it.
British troops 'killed Afghan children'
Sixteen children were among the civilians shot or bombed in error by British troops, according to claims in the leaked military logs.
The secret documents suggest Coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in incidents that have never been reported.
The logs detail the toll on civilians - ' blue on white' in military jargon - and reveals 144 incidents.
Some casualties come from air strikes but a large number of previously unknown incidents appears to be the result of troops - determined to protect themselves - shooting unarmed drivers or motorcyclists.
The bloody errors include the day French troops strafed a bus full of children in 2008, wounding eight. A US patrol machine-gunned another bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers.
Pride: The Prince of Wale talks to a soldier while presenting medals to British servicemen in Guetersloh, western Germany
In 2007 Polish troops mortared a village, killing six from a wedding party which included a pregnant woman, in an apparent revenge attack.
The bulk of the 'blue on white' file consists of civilian shootings by jumpy troops at checkpoints, near bases or on convoys.
The logs contain descriptions of 21 separate occasions in which British troops are said to have shot or bombed Afghan civilians - identifying at least 26 people killed and another 20 wounded as a result.
The number of dead or wounded allegedly caused by the British include 16 children, at least three woman and a mentally ill man.
Served with honour: Prince Charles chatted to the families as he honoured solidiers who had recently served in Afghanistan
It is a small fraction of the 369 civilian casualities listed in the log as due to coalition - mostly US - action in total.
More than 320 UK soldiers have been killed since British troops were deployed to Helmand but the war logs describe two clusters of British shootings that do not appear to have been properly investigated.
There is a group of four shootings in Kabul in little more than a month in 2007 when civilians are wounded and a US report that after 'UK Coy reported force escalation' the son of an Afghan general died of subsequent gunshot wounds.
Documents also report a cluster of eight shootings involving Royal Marine commandos in Helmand in the six months from October 2008.
Four recorded instances of air strikes being called in by the UK also resulted in civilian casualites.
Pakistani spies 'helped Taliban'
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency is accused of helping fund, arm and train the Taliban in the U.S. documents.
It allegedly helped train suicide bombers, shuffled money across the border and secretly supported insurgents.
The reports claim the agency from the nuclear-armed country was involved in a plot to assassinate Presidend Hamid Karzai and bids to attack Nato planes.
One note from February 2007 claims militants teamed up with the ISI to poison the alcohol supply of western troops.
Former ISI chief Hamid Gul allegedly sent three men to Kabul in December 2006 to carry out attacks.
'Reportedly Gul's final comment to the three individuals was to make the snow warm in Kabul, basically telling them to set Kabul aflame,' the report said.
Gul denied allegations he had worked with the Taliban and said the leaks were 'fiction and nothing else'.
Few of the plots described ever materialised and the allegations have been regarded with scepticism by experts.
The ISI today denied the claims. A senior ISI official said they were from raw intelligence reports that had not been verified.
Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., said the documents 'do not reflect the current on-ground realities'.
The United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan are 'jointly endeavoring to defeat al-Qaida and its Taliban allies militarily and politically,' he said.
Taliban's anti-aircraft missiles
A surface-to-air missile strike by the Taliban on a Chinook carrying seven soldiers was covered up by the U.S. military, the war logs claim.
The strike proved insurgents had anti-aircraft weapons far earlier than originally thought.
At least 10 near-misses over four years against coalition aircraft are detailed in the leaked files. One happened as a plane was refuelling at 11,000ft.
The extent of the threat was downplayed in public by military chiefs to avoid alarm. There were also fears in U.S. circles that Iran and Pakistan could be supplying the Taliban.
Deadly: The Reaper, a heafvily-armed unmanned drone increasingly used by coalition troops
The Chinook was shot down in May 2007 over Helmand. Its rear engine was hit and it burst into flames before plunging to the ground.
Everyone on board, including Corporal Mike Gilyeat, 28, from the Royal Military Police, were killed.
Nato and U.S. officials later said it had been targeted by a rocket-propelled grenade, despite the U.S. pilot logs disagreeing.
'Witness statements from Chalk 3 [a different plane] suggest Flipper was struck by Manpad [shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile],' the report said.
More missiles were launched in the following 30 minutes at Apache helicopters circling the scene.
The U.S. logs show the Taliban had anti-aircraft missiles called Stingers as early as September 2005.
A British Chinook narrowly escaped in June 2007 when a missile passed within 50ft of the plane.
The presence of anti-aircraft weapons in Afghanistan has a particular resonance because it is thought they played a key part in forcing out the Soviet Union in 1989.
American death squads
A 'black' special forces squad led by the U.S. targets Taliban and Al-Qaeda figures in Afghanistan.
The team, Task Force 373, hunts for suspects on a 2,000 strong list to kill or capture, known as Jpel.
The log allegedly reveals the unit has killed innocent men, women and children and Afghan police officers who got in their way.
An entry on June 11 2007 told how a taskforce set out with Afghan special forces to capture or kill Taliban commander Qarl Ur-Rahman.
They crept up in the dark but opened fire when a torch was shone on them. A AC-130 gunship was called in for back up and started shooting.
The report said: 7x ANP KIA, 4x WIA - meaning seven Afghan police officers were dead and four wounded. The involvement of TF-373 was never mentioned.
Six days later, another taskforce armed with a HIMAR - a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System - was sent out to find Libyan fighter Abu Laith al-Libi.
They aimed to fire rockets at a village where they thought he was hiding and then send in ground troops.
But they failed to find Libi and killed six Taliban fighters. Searcing a madrassa after the attack, they found seven Taliban children dead or dying in the rubble.
The coalition admitted the deaths but blamed the attack on 'nefarious activity' when it was actually to find al-Libi. It also did not mention Nato forces had fired first, rather than in retaliation.
The internal report into the incident was marked 'secret' but also 'Noforn' - meaning it should not be shared with the foreign members of the coalition.
'The knowledge that TF-373 conducted a HIMARS strike must be protected,' it said.
Months later, in October 2007, a team confronted the Taliban in a village in Laswanday. They called in air support and 500lb bombs were dropped on a house from where they had been firing.
The incident left 12 U.S. wounded and one girl, a woman and four men dead. No Taliban fighters were wounded or killed.
A statement claimed several insurgents had died and did not mention any civilians. Later it was admitted 'several non-combatants were found dead and others wounded' but there were no specifics.
Evidence of war crimes
Mr Assange has said the files Wikileaks has received may contain evidence of war crimes.
He said that the military files showed that the 'course of the war needed to change' and stated that 'thousands' of war crimes may have been committed in Afghanistan.
Speaking at a press conference at the Frontline Club in central London, Mr Assange said: 'It is up to a court to decide clearly whether something is in the end a crime.
'That said, on the face of it, there does appear to be evidence of war crimes in this material.'
'We would like to see the revelations that this material gives to be taken seriously, investigated by governments and new policies put in place as a result, if not prosecutions of those people who have committed abuses.'
Mr Assange has held back 15,000 documents and promised to release thousands more in the coming weeks.
Coffee run: Jennifer Garner dashed for a coffee between takes for her new film Arthur in New York yesterday
Refreshed: With an iced tea and a paper in hand, she headed back to the set
Unholy impersonation: Russell Brand tries on a Priest's robes in the costume department in a break from filming Arthur
Leading men: Brand's character was all dressed up for his character's wedding while Nick Nolte was dressed as a guest 
1. Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) in 
One of the most chastised elements in Stephenie Meyer's 
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