Dame Esther Rantzen, the broadcaster and campaigner who founded Childline, has died aged 86 after living with lung cancer diagnosed in 2023. Her family remembered her as a loving mother and grandmother with an “endless capacity for joy”, and said her compassion and understanding would live on through her charities.

Rantzen was best known for presenting the BBC programme *That’s Life!* from 1973 to 1994 and for her campaigning on behalf of children, older people and the terminally ill. Made a dame in 2015, she was told her cancer could not be cured, but lived beyond her expectations after receiving an experimental drug. She had joined Dignitas in 2023 and later said she was too physically fragile to travel there.