Rupert Murdoch’s mother, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, has died aged 103.

The Australian, a paper owned by her son Rupert, reports that she died peacefully at her home in Melbourne, Australia.

His mother’s age and good health was something that Rupert Murdoch had used in the past to deflect questions about his own retirement plans. In a recent profile of his daughter Elisabeth (named for her grandmother), New Yorker writer Ken Auletta stated:

He maintains a careful diet, works out with a trainer, and reminds people that his mother, Dame Elisabeth, is a hundred and three years old. “When the Queen Mum died, at one hundred and one,” Roger Ailes recalls, “I said to Rupert, ‘She had a good run.’ ” Murdoch replied, “I’d call it an early death.”