Thanks for the replies, folks; never imagined there would be so much interest. Can I just say “She was 26” was a purely hypothetical example to simply illustrate the point I was trying to make, and not an actual line from my book. I decided to change to numerals because there is one scene (an argument over someone’s age and the events in their life) where the unavoidable amount of hyphenated words (eg “Twenty-Six”) in such a short passage looked very untidy and clumsy.
Not sure I can really look to Shakespeare for guidance either, because of course language and styles have changed over the years; he may never have written “26” but then again I’d never write “Wherefore art thou?”
I think sticking rigidly to either all words or all numerals is likely to bring problems of its own, and the answer is to use your own feeling for what is ‘right’ whilst trying to remain as consistent as possible.
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