Esther Rantzen Esther Rantzen Dame Esther Louise Rantzen (born 22 June 1940) is an English journalist and television presenter, who presented the BBC television series "That's Life!" for 21 years, from 1973 until 1994. She works with various charitable causes, and founded the charities ChildLine, promoting child protection, which she set up in 1986, and The Silver Line, designed to combat loneliness, which she set up in 2012. Rantzen was born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England, to Katherine Flora Rantzen ("née" Leverson, 1911–2005) and Henry Barnato Rantzen (1902–1992). She has one younger sister, Priscilla N. Taylor. She attended Buckley Country Day School in
Annie S. Swan and "Maitland of Lauriston" (1891). These owed a debt to the fiction of Margaret Oliphant, who was among her critics, accusing Swan's novels of presenting a stereotypical, unrealistic depiction of Scotland. In a review of "Carlowrie" (1884), Oliphant went so far as to say Swan "presented an entirely distorted view of Scottish life." Because of her dominance over "Women at Home", editor-in-chief W.R. Nicoll often called it "Annie Swan's Magazine". She later became editor of the magazine from 1893 to 1917. While writing for the "British Weekly", she became acquainted with S. R. Crockett and J. M. Barrie, whose work