Dame Esther Rantzen, who died yesterday aged 86, leaves behind a remarkable legacy of compassion, shaped in large part by the charities and causes she championed.

Alongside founding Childline and The Silver Line and campaigning for assisted dying, one of the defining moments of her career was bringing the story of one of the Second World War’s least-known heroes to a global audience.

Nicholas Winton, a modest stockbroker from Hampstead, had kept the secret for nearly half a century when his wife, Grete, discovered a scrapbook in the attic of their Maidenhead home in 1987.

The scrapbook contained the names and photographs of hundreds of children. It soon emerged that, at the age of 29, Nicholas had helped rescue them from Nazi-occupied Prague shortly before the outbreak of war.

Sir Nicholas ultimately helped 669 children, most of them Jewish, flee Czechoslovakia for Britain by train. He also arranged sponsorship and homes for them under a law introduced after Kristallnacht.

In one of television’s most extraordinary scenes, Dame Esther and the That’s Life! team reunited him with many of the people he had saved, as well as the families they later built.

The emotional reunion was recreated in meticulous detail in the 2023 film One Life, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins and featuring descendants of those Sir Nicholas helped escape.

Ostensibly a light-hearted consumer affairs programme, That’s Life! balanced comic features involving talented pets and oddly shaped vegetables with investigations into dangerous products, fraudsters and child abuse.

Dame Esther’s lively presence was central to the show’s appeal. She once found herself arrested after encouraging passers-by to try “bat soup” and famously urged Annie Mizen to sample champagne after the charming woman in her 80s told her: “I’m not a drinker.”

Yet one of her most enduring television moments, still widely circulated online, was the reunion between Sir Nicholas—who was finally knighted in 2003—and many of the children he had saved from almost certain extermination.

After finding the scrapbook in 1987, Grete took it to Holocaust historian Elizabeth Maxwell, the wife of newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell, hoping that some of the children rescued by Nicholas could be traced.

On February 28, 1988, Maxwell published Sir Nicholas’s story in the Sunday Mirror, describing the children he had saved as “The Lost Children”.

That same day, Dame Esther invited him to appear on That’s Life!—with a surprise waiting for him in the studio.

Sir Nicholas recognised one person in the audience: Rudolf Wessely, a teacher who had travelled out of Prague on one of the Kindertransport trains.

The pair had met at an Abbeyfield Homes meeting in 1987. Sir Nicholas had founded the sheltered housing charity later in life, but that connection was not the reason he had been invited onto the programme.

From the front row, Sir Nicholas asked the woman sitting beside him whether she would change seats with him. She refused—and there was a deeply personal reason why.

The woman was Vera Gissen. In 1939, when she was 11-year-old Vera Diamant, she had been among the children Sir Nicholas helped evacuate from Prague. For years, she had been trying to find the man who saved her life.

‘We did find her name, Vera Diamant, as she was then, on this list,’ Dame Esther said cheerily, adding: ‘Vera Gissen is here with us tonight. Hello Vera.’

The camera panned to Mrs Gissen who – now very much acknowledging the man next to her – turned to Sir Nicholas, grabbed his hand, and pulled him into an embrace as the audience burst into applause. 

Sir Nicholas, visibly stunned, could be seen dabbing his eyes with his handkerchief as Mrs Gissen told him: ‘Thank you.’

‘Hang on to your handkerchief,’ Dame Esther said, before revealing that two more children – Hanusch Schnabl and Milena Fleischmann (better known now as Holocaust awareness campaigner Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines) – were sat next to him as well.

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Addressing a clearly emotional Sir Nicholas, the presenter told him: ‘I know you don’t want thanks, but you’re certainly going to get them.’

The moment turned Nicholas Winton into a national hero. The Daily Mail labelled him ‘Britain’s own Schindler’, after Oskar Schindler, the German who saved the lives of 1,200 Jewish children during the Second World War.

More was to come. On July 3 1988, Sir Nicholas was invited back onto That’s Life! to revisit the segment – and Dame Esther had another sensational surprise primed.

Asking the audience if any of them ‘owes their life to Nicholas Winton’, around two dozen people sat immediately around him in the studio stood up – all children evacuated from Prague thanks to his efforts.

Sir Nicholas flashed a brief grin – then, as he sat down, wiped tears from both eyes.

That it took decades for his understated heroism to come to light is no surprise: not even his wife Grete knew he had travelled to Prague in 1938 at the behest of his friend, Martin Blake, who was working with Czech refugee groups.

Sir Nicholas – known as ‘Nicky’ among his family – spent just three weeks in the city but set in motion part of what became known as the Kindertransport operation that would ultimately rescue 10,000 children from across Nazi-occupied Europe.

He chipped in to cover costs, dealt with the heavy bureaucracy and organisation and,  reportedly, forged travel documents and bribed officials when frustrated by delays.

With assurances given that each child would come with a £50 guarantee (£2,900 now) to cover the costs of repatriation post-conflict, the first train left on March 14 1939, a day before the Nazis fully occupied the country.

Eight would leave in all, with collaborators in Prague including Trevor Chadwick seeing them off before being met by Sir Nicholas and others in London. The children were then settled with willing British families, never to see their own parents again.

What was to be the last train was cancelled by the Nazis on September 1 – the day they invaded Poland and closed all borders. 

Of the 250 children on board, just two are thought to have survived the war, according to an interview Vera Gissing gave in 2006. The failure to get the final train through haunted Sir Nicholas for the rest of his life.

Initially a conscientious objector, he later joined the RAF and, post-war, he worked for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development as the rebuilding of a battle-scarred Europe began.

Then, following a failed bid to run for Maidenhead’s town council, he disappeared into civilian life. Even as he committed himself to charity work, he never mentioned what he considered his unremarkable and ordinary deeds in Prague to anyone.

That was until 1987 – when Grete found the scrapbook and set the ball rolling on what became one of television’s greatest ever moments.

It gave Sir Nicholas the recognition he had long deserved, and Dame Esther would keep in contact with Sir Nicholas regularly, the pair reuniting on screen for ITV documentary Winton’s Children in 2003. He died in 2015, at the age of 106.

She would later reveal her belief that he remained humble about his achievements because he was haunted by the final train that failed to leave Prague.

Speaking on the phone before his That’s Life! appearance, Sir Nicholas had told Dame Esther that he ‘hadn’t saved enough’.

She recalled in 2023: ‘I said, “Why do you say that?”. And he said because there was a last train, it had 250 children on the train… they had closed the border and all those children had to be taken off the train.

‘That moment is reconstructed in this feature film [One Life]. It traumatised Nicky, and I think for him, the memory was of his failure.’

But even now, his legacy endures: a statue of him was erected in Prague Main Train Station in 2009, as a ‘Winton Train’ with descendants of those he saved on board left Prague on the anniversary of what should have been the final train’s escape.

It followed the fateful train’s route across land and sea before a final train brought passengers into Liverpool Street – where Sir Nicholas waited to greet them, as he had some 70 years prior. 

Another statue was erected outside Maidenhead Train Station in 2010, while Sir Nicholas would receive the Czech Republic’s highest honour, the Order of the White Lion, in 2014.

Johnny Flynn and Sir Anthony Hopkins would later play him in One Life, the critically acclaimed biopic that ended with recreations of the That’s Life! reunions.

The film’s epilogue reveals that the audience in its recreation of the show was drawn entirely from the 6,000 people who are alive thanks to his quiet heroism.

Some of those in the audience travelled from Switzerland, France and Romania to England to be in the film, to pay their own touching tribute to a man who wanted no thanks for going above and beyond.

Frank Abagnale built his reputation by deceiving people. Now, the former con man is warning that artificial intelligence has equipped modern fraudsters with tools he could once only have imagined.

The ex-con man whose life story inspired Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can says AI is making scams faster, less expensive and more difficult to detect. Criminals can now produce convincing fake identities, voices and messages on a massive scale.

Abagnale issued the warning this week while speaking at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Compliance and Risk Management Conference in Washington, DC.

The 78-year-old has spent decades advising financial institutions, companies and government agencies on fraud prevention. He said the threat has moved well beyond traditional forgery and check scams.

Abagnale’s own safeguards include freezing his credit, writing relatively few checks and keeping the number of apps on his phone to a minimum.

However, he said consumers and businesses must now be far more cautious about who is really communicating with them by phone, email or video call.

His advice is straightforward: Never assume that what you see or hear is genuine. Verify it through an independent channel.

That warning is becoming increasingly urgent as artificial intelligence enables criminals to replicate real people through highly convincing voices, images and videos.

AI can also multiply the number of potential victims, enabling scammers to send enormous volumes of persuasive messages at very little cost.

Abagnale, who spent years evading the FBI, told the conference that data stolen in earlier breaches can remain valuable to criminals for years—especially when it is combined with modern AI tools.

The threat is increasingly shifting from attacks that breach computer systems to schemes that manipulate the people operating them.

A striking example occurred in Hong Kong in 2024, when an employee at engineering firm Arup was deceived into transferring approximately $25.6 million. The employee had joined a video conference featuring AI-generated versions of senior colleagues.

The employee had initially questioned a message seeking a confidential transaction. But the fabricated video meeting made the request seem credible.

The case demonstrated how criminals can pair traditional social engineering with AI technology to overcome a victim’s initial suspicions.

The real estate industry is emerging as another significant target. Property deals involve large sums of money and often depend heavily on identity verification.

The American Land Title Association (ALTA) said this month that 59 percent of surveyed title firms had encountered at least one attempted seller-impersonation scam in 2025. That compares with 28 percent in the organization’s previous survey, conducted in 2024.

In these schemes, criminals pose as property owners and try to sell homes or land that they do not actually own.

The latest ALTA research, based on responses from 245 title professionals across 40 states, Washington, DC, and the US Virgin Islands, also found that 45 percent of firms had seen an attempt during the month before the survey. 

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Deepfake images and voices are already part of the fraudsters’ toolkit, with 58 percent of respondents describing their use as at least somewhat common.

And the potential losses are substantial: Among firms that had experienced seller-impersonation attempts, one in four reported a paid claim connected to the fraud, while half of those disclosing average claim costs reported losses above $100,000. 

The warning comes as the mortgage industry itself is increasingly experimenting with AI, although adoption remains relatively early.

A separate survey released this week by the Mortgage Bankers Association, the American Association of Residential Mortgage Regulators and Boston Consulting Group found that nearly 60 percent of respondents regarded regulatory and compliance uncertainty as their biggest obstacle to greater AI adoption. 

The survey also found that nearly all participating mortgage firms had at least one or two AI applications in production, but that most uses were concentrated on productivity and support rather than core mortgage processes.

For consumers, the lesson from Abagnale and the mortgage industry is that seeing something convincing is no longer necessarily enough to prove it is genuine.

A familiar voice on the phone, a realistic-looking video or an email containing personal information could all potentially be part of a carefully constructed scam.

That means people should independently verify requests involving money or sensitive information rather than relying solely on the contact details or communication channel provided by the person making the request.

For property transactions in particular, industry experts recommend using multiple layers of verification, including independent identity checks, secure authentication and direct contact through trusted channels.

A Hollywood filmmaker who spent more than a decade attempting to rescue his family’s ancestral mansion, nicknamed “Downton Shabby”, has lost his High Court challenge.

Hopwood DePree, 56, had been leading efforts to restore 600-year-old Hopwood Hall in Middleton, Greater Manchester, after the historic property fell into serious disrepair.

The filmmaker, who is from Michigan in the United States, discovered the hall in 2013 while researching his family history. He found the building in a derelict condition, with shattered windows, collapsing ceilings and water running down the walls.

Mr DePree said he reached an agreement with Rochdale Borough Council (RBC) in 2017 to acquire the Grade II-listed property for £1. In 2022, he was granted planning permission to transform the hall into an events venue and invested around £750,000 in its restoration.

However, Rochdale Council withdrew its consent in 2024, citing alleged health and safety breaches. The building was subsequently closed, leaving Mr DePree and his team unable to access the historic site.

A High Court judge has now ruled against Mr DePree, finding that the conditions attached to the proposed transfer of ownership had not been met. The decision means he will not regain access to Hopwood Hall.

At Manchester Civil Justice Centre on Wednesday, His Honour Judge David Hodge KC refused to grant relief, ruling that the 2022 planning permission did not satisfy the requirements needed to transfer the property to Mr DePree.

Judge Hodge said the case was “not about perceived grievances”, but “simply a matter of contractual interpretation”.

He said: “Having read and heard in court, both parties want to restore Hopwood Hall and bring it back to life and to its former glory.

“In my judgment, the defendant’s submission better fits the option agreement. I therefore refuse to grant relief.”

After the ruling, Mr DePree described the result as “incredibly disappointing” and a “huge blow” to his community, supporters and charitable heritage rescue groups across Britain.

He said: “Please know that my team and I are already determining our legal options and next steps. We will be watching closely to monitor Rochdale Borough Council’s efforts to save Hopwood Hall for the community and restore it to its former glory.”

The dispute centred on whether the planning permission secured by Mr DePree in 2022 was sufficient to activate a 2017 agreement that he says entitled him to have the hall transferred to him for £1.

The council argued that the permission covered only a “change of use” and did not authorise the physical refurbishment work it said had to be completed before the transfer could be exercised.

Mr DePree’s legal team argued that the agreement did not require a single, comprehensive planning permission covering every aspect of the restoration, which was expected to cost tens of millions of pounds.

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The court heard even if Mr DePree was to put in planning permission for the refurbishment he would ‘still need change of use permission’, and it ‘doesn’t make sense’ for him to spend money on planning permission when ‘he didn’t need it’.

Mr Piers Riley Smith, co-counsel for the defendant, argued the claimants ‘use of planning in the case was used to complicate rather than clarify’.

He mentioned several ‘red herrings’ including surrounding the ‘scope of permissions’ of the agreed works and details on their ‘spatial extent’.

But Geraint Wheatley, barrister for RBC, raised concerns around the claimant’s determination of the full planning permission definition which he says ‘they ignored.’ 

He also referenced that Mr DePree is not an ‘experienced developer’.

Following the judgment, a council spokesperson said they were ‘pleased’ with the judgment but added it was ‘a shame that we had to endure a costly court battle’.

They added the hall would be ‘used for the benefit of the wider community’ in future. 

Dating from 1426, Hopwood Hall has a rich history – with Guy Fawkes staying there, as well as Lord Byron who finished his celebrated poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage at the home.

It is also said to have had connections with Mr DePree’s ancestors that date back 400 years to his 17th century relative John Hopwood.

Mr DePree was not aware of the building’s existence until 2013, but relocated to Britain to restore the property with the help of volunteers and heritage experts.

He claims to have invested around £750,000 of his own money into the restoration project and documented the journey in a book, called Downton Shabby.

Mr DePree previously said the restoration would be a tribute not just to the community, but to his late grandfather, who read him bedtime stories as a child about an English castle. 

‘It would be an incredible day to see Hopwood Hall restored,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘Not only for myself after everything we’ve gone through, but also for my grandfather who has passed away.’

It is thought Mr DePree plans to appeal the court’s decision. 

Do you have a story? Email caitlin.leng@dailymail.co.uk