Even in the throes of terminal illness, Dame Esther Rantzen begged MPs to allow her to attend a debate in Parliament on assisted dying, then urged people to write to their MP about the topic, so committed was she throughout her life to campaigning and making a difference for others.
Diagnosed with stage four lung cancer in 2018, Dame Esther finally succumbed to the illness on September 30, 2026. She was 86.
Dame Esther openly revealed the fact that she had joined Dignitas, the assisted dying clinic in Switzerland, to avoid the possibility of a protracted and painful death. As proposed legislation was set to be brought before the Commons, she stressed that assisted dying could be “carefully legalised” and wrote to her own MP to argue for a change in the law that would mean she “could look forward in confidence to a death which is pain-free surrounded by people I love”.
Born in 1940 in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, to Katherine and Henry Rantzen, Dame Esther went to school in New York for two years before returning to London and attending North London Collegiate School, and then Oxford University in 1959 where she read English.
After graduating, she was recruited by BBC radio, before she began her television career, in researching, working on current affairs programmes and the award-winning BBC2 documentary series Man Alive which tackled social and political issues in society. In 1968, she became a reporter for BBC1’s Braden's Week, and when the programme was replaced with That's Life! in 1973, Rantzen was made the main presenter. She presented That's Life! for 21 years.
Through her television shows, Esther Rantzen campaigned for her viewers. And although she was a journalist and broadcaster by trade, Dame Esther told The Independent in 2006, “I like it when people describe me as a campaigner.”
On That's Life! – which became one of the most popular shows on British television – she investigated and campaigned for issues such as the need for more organ donors to monumental effect. The programme’s national campaign to find a donor liver for a two-year-old dying of liver disease resulted in the toddler becoming the first child in the UK to have a liver transplant. While the toddler sadly died, the campaign led to tens of thousands of pounds being raised to support children with the disease, and kickstarted a revolutionary child liver transplant programme in the UK. In another example of Rantzen fighting for others, after the programme’s investigation into Crookham Court boarding school near Newbury, the "dirty and depressing" school with unsatisfactory teaching standards and a paedophile headmaster who employed several paedophile teachers, the school was closed and the head and a member of staff convicted of sexual offences.
Dame Esther also devoted her life to charitable causes; she was the patron of 23 charities including Operation Encompass. “I do as much as I can on behalf of charities, notably Childline and the NSPCC, and for disabled and older people,” she said.
In February 2026, she added her name to those backing the reexamination of the case of Lucy Letby, serving a life sentence for the murder of seven newborn and attempted murder of seven others at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
She told The Sunday Times: “I know that the bereaved parents are still mourning the babies and dread having to relive those tragedies if a retrial is agreed.
“But I believe it would be tragedy upon tragedy if the loss of their babies resulted in the life imprisonment of a nurse whose own life had been shattered beyond repair and who deserves justice.” Speaking as an investigative journalist knowing the difficulties and complications of uncovering the truth, she added “......It may be that Lucy Letby is a serial killer but it may be that she is not. She had twice been refused permission to appeal against her conviction. But I believe the time has come for all the evidence to be examined.”
The proudest achievement of her working life was her work with ChildLine, the helpline for children she founded in 1986. She also set up The Silver Line in 2013, to combat loneliness and isolation in older people's lives through information, advice and a free confidential helpline.
She championed courage and kindness in others, too, instigating “Children of Courage” for BBC’s Children in Need, and celebrating members of the public who had performed unsung good deeds and acts of heroism in the television series Hearts of Gold that she created in 1988. The show ran until 1996.
Her work, both journalistic and charitable, was recognised with numerous awards. She was awarded an OBE for services to broadcasting in 1991, a CBE for services to children in 2006, and in the 2015 New Year Honours she was made a Dame for services to children and older people through Childline and The Silver Line. In 2016 she was made an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford.
Rantzen was devoted to her film-maker husband Desmond Wilcox for 22 years, with whom she had three children, until his death in 2000. After his passing, she made the programme How to Have a Good Death, for BBC Two, as part of her campaigning for better palliative care. And she continued to campaign throughout her illness. Having seen her husband, her mother and her dog die, she said that her dog's death was the one she "envied".
"Isn't it typically British that we give the pets we love a pain-free, dignified, private death but we can't offer it to the people we love," she told the BBC's Today programme. Her elder daughter suffers from ME/CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) which led her to raise awareness of the condition.
At the age of 80, she moved to the New Forest from north London, which she had found a “magical” place as a child on holidays.
She is survived by hers and Wilcox’s three children, Rebecca Wilcox, Miriam (changed her name from Emily) Wilcox and Joshua Wilcox.
Dame Esther described her early upbringing as “respectable and uneventful”. Her father Henry Barnato Rantzen was an electrical engineer and worked for the BBC. When he returned home at 6pm, Esther's mother would have his slippers and a small glass of sherry ready, and he would tell his family about his day.
It was from her father that Esther gained her sense of ambition. “He taught me not to self-limit but to go for broke,” she told The Guardian.
Who Do You think You Are?, on which Dame Esther featured in 2008, revealed her family history. The rarity of her surname enabled her paternal line to be traced back to the 1760s, to an established Jewish neighbourhood in Warsaw, and she discovered her great-grandfather Abraham had emigrated from Poland to Britain in the late 1850s and become a cap maker in Spitalfields. She was surprised to find that her wealthy stockbroker grandfather Hyam Henry Rantzen had been born in this East End slum.
She also discovered that her great-grandfather’s brother-in-law was Barney Barnato, owner of the Kimberley Diamond Mine in South Africa and one of the 19th century's richest men, who helped him to move to the less-impoverished Newington in Lambeth, and the salubrious Paddington later in 1891.
On her wealthy maternal side, her great-grandfather Montague Richard Leverson had been one of the founders of West London Synagogue and grandfather of British composer Gerald Finzi. But she also discovered family scandal through taking part in Who Do You think You Are?
“My notion of coming from a respectable family was shattered,” she said, recalling the revelation that her great-grandfather Montague, a lawyer, had accidentally killed the parlour maid when he was playing with a loaded gun aged 18, and how he absconded with large sums of his clients' money in his thirties only to return to Britain in his eighties and marry a teacher half his age.
Other notable relatives in Dame Esther’s family are the British writer Ada Leverson, a friend of Oscar Wilde, and the novelist Michael Meyer.
Born June 22, 1940. Died September 30, 2026
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