Tributes have come in from across the South to the “remarkable” broadcaster and campaigner Dame Esther Rantzen, whose death at the age of 86 was announced on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
She was best known for presenting the BBC TV programme That’s Life! for more than two decades, as well as for setting up the charity Childline.<\/p>\n
In her later years, the legendary broadcaster permanently relocated from the capital to her cottage in Bramshaw in the New Forest, Hampshire.<\/p>\n
Local Conservative MP Sir Julian Lewis had struck up a regular correspondence with his constituent over recent years. He said Dame Esther had been “an absolutely scintillating, glittering and unforgettable personality”.<\/p>\n
She had led the “introduction of so many things of benefit to so many vulnerable groups in society”, he added.<\/p>\n
Having been born in Hertfordshire, Dame Esther studied at the University of Oxford before forging her career in London.<\/p>\n
In 2021 Dame Esther reflected on her move to Hampshire, which came after the Covid-19 pandemic, telling BBC Radio Solent that the forest was “always my haven”.<\/p>\n
“If we had a birthday party, if we had a wedding to celebrate, it was always here in the New Forest,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tributes have come in from across the South to the “remarkable” broadcaster and campaigner Dame Esther Rantzen, whose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-788382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}