Dame Esther Louise Rantzen DBE is an English journalist and television presenter, who presented the BBC television series That’s Life! for 21 years, from 1973 until 1994.
Why did Esther Rantzen’s daughter change her name?
My older daughter, Emily, had ME for 14 years. Thankfully she is better now and lives with me. She recently joined Kabbalah and changed her name to a more biblical name, “Miriam” – a little hard for me as she was named after my maternal grandmother, Emily, whom I adored. But I get around it by calling her “Em”.
In our family, for 14 desperate years, our least happy child was my eldest, Emily, who became ill with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) and then seriously disabled. It struck her down when she was 14, after an attack of glandular fever.13 Feb 2011
She stuck to it rigidly for four days (Emily has redoubtable willpower which is, I think, how she forced her way out of the prison of her illness), and over a cup of tea she suddenly said, ‘Look, Mum, the rash has gone.’