OPINION: That’s (the extraordinary) Life of Sir Nicholas Winton

There are certain YouTube videos guaranteed to elicit joy however long one has been stuck behind a desk. The video for Girls Aloud’s ‘The Promise’ is one, Mike Parry eating cinnamon another. The Australian icon being arrested for enjoying a succulent Chinese meal and anything involving sickly children unexpectedly meeting sporting heroes are fail-safes. But one short clip surpasses all others in this regard and it involves Sir Nicholas Winton, who died in July a decade ago at the age of 106, the exception that proves Billy Joel’s rule about the good dying young.

The footage comes from a 1988 episode of That’s Life, a BBC consumer affairs programme fronted by Esther Rantzen. Winton, commonly regarded as the “British Schindler”, had been responsible for saving 669 children from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the war and had largely kept quiet about his humanitarian work for half a century. The past is a different country; there was no social media there.

Winton’s Czech Kindertransport heroics would probably have gone unnoticed for eternity had his wife not discovered a scrapbook containing the names of the children he saved as well as the names and addresses of the families who took them in. Letters were sent out and 80 of the children were found in Britain.

Little is more moving than humanity in the face of inhumanity and Winton was goodness incarnate. In the footage, Rantzen displays the scrapbook before introducing one of those saved, Vera Gissen. It then cuts to the audience and Vera is informed by the presenter that she is, in fact, sitting next to the man who saved her life. Vera proceeds to gently take Winton’s hand before whispering “hello” and embracing this smartly dressed man to her right.

Winton, at this stage in his late seventies, is clearly overwhelmed and uses his finger to wipe away tears obscured from our view by the thick lenses in his glasses. Vera only says one other thing on camera but she says it twice. In a sense, it’s the only thing she could possibly say. Two words that have never been more deserved in the course of human history: “Thank you.”

‘That’s Life’ would return to the story and the viral video splices the footage from both episodes together. On this occasion, Rantzen asks if anyone present in the audience “owes their life to Nicholas Winton”. Dozens of people stand and applaud. In fact, in this shot, only Winton and his wife remain seated. He is, once again, overwhelmed. The video has been viewed almost 44 million times since it was uploaded in 2009 and one can imagine it’s had a similar effect on literally millions of people, though admittedly I may be responsible for around 25% of those views.

The video cuts off the moment at the end when Rantzen asked if anyone present was the child or grandchild of one of the children Winton saved and the remainder of the audience stood. In essence, he was responsible for the lives of every single person in the audience that day, his actions echoing down the generations ad infinitum.

For the remainder of his days, Winton would be honoured with books, documentaries, statues and just about anything else one can imagine, ranging from a knighthood to a Google Doodle. In 2023, ‘One Life’ was released in cinemas and the biopic saw Winton played by Johnny Flynn and Anthony Hopkins at different stages of his life. In a sense, though, that grainy footage of 1980s television, lasting only a couple of minutes, tells the whole story better than Hollywood ever could.

Winton once said, “If something isn’t blatantly impossible, then there must be a way of doing it.” He did not act for any reason beyond knowing it was the correct thing to do and downplayed the idea he was a hero since he did not believe he was in any danger personally. He was a humanist in adult life and espoused the importance of ethics above all else. He believed most people would have done the same in his position but, as thousands of years of civilisation can attest, this is patently untrue.

By way of a coda, were ‘That’s Life’ to return to our screens in 2025 for another look at the Winton story, then they might need to build a bigger studio. At the time of writing, some 6,000 people are alive as a result of this one man’s actions.

• Darren Richman is a writer and journalist.