Fleapit revisited:One Life.

Nicholas Winton (Anthony Hopkins) is a mild mannered, grey haired, septuagenarian who lives with his wife Grete (Lena Olin) in a nice house with a swimming pool and a verdant garden on the outskirts of Maidenhead. He drives a Saab, swims in his pool, enjoys the occasional glass of wine, and he's got a messy office overflowing with paperwork and documents. Which Grete insists needs decluttering ready for the arrival of a grand-daughter.

When Grete goes away for a few days, Nicholas goes about clearing out his office but he seems haunted by something. We see him sat in the dark, only his own reflection for company, pondering something that happened a long time ago. Though he won't admit it's stayed with him, he can't help thinking about what he did in the run up to, and during the early days, of World War II.

Even though what he did, as we see in James Hawes' new film One Life, was heroic. Raised by his formidable mother, Babi (Helena Bonham Carter), with ideas of egalitarianism, liberty, and socialism, young Nicky (as people called him back then) was horrified to discover what was happening in Czechoslovakia. Hitler and the Nazis had already annexed Austria and then, waved through by the major powers of Europe who believed (wrongly, of course) that this would satisfy Hitler, occupied the Sudetenland regions of Czechoslovakia.

The Kindertransport rescue effort of Jewish children from Germany and Austria didn't extend to Czechoslovakia so there were thousands of children, Jewish and otherwise, and adults making their way to Prague. Even though it seemed highly likely that Prague (as with much of Europe) would soon fall to the Nazis.

As the children try to escape Czechoslovakia, young, idealistic, Nicky travels the other way. There he meets with the head of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia Doreen Warriner (Romola Garai) and fellow humanitarians Trevor Chadwick (Alex Sharp), and Hana Hejdukova (Juliana Moska) and they hatch a plan to fill train after train with Czech children escaping the Nazi horrors to come.

But it's not easy. Each one needs paperwork, each one needs a British home to go to, and each one needs a sponsor to the tune of £50 (roughly £17,000 in today's money). There's a lot of people in Britain who want to help but there are also a significant number who don't want these 'REFUJEWS' washing up on British shores. Plus ca change!

Nicky, Doreen, Hana, and Trevor work tirelessly and endlessly and the scenes in which we see the young children board the train and wave goodbye to their parents, and elder siblings, are quite heartbreaking. We're pleased for them because we know they're being taken to safety - but we also know, even if the children couldn't at the time, the horrific fate that awaits those that have been left behind.

One Life doesn't dwell long on this but it doesn't ignore it either. When Winton, now in his late seventies, is invited to Robert Maxwell's mansion to meet his wife Betty (Marthe Keller) to talk her through his exhaustively annotated scrapbooks he tells her he tries not to dwell on those who never made it (even though he clearly does). Betty wastes no time in explaining that most of them will have "perished in the camps".

Winton's clearing out of his office, and his meeting with Maxwell, results in a call from the then enormously popular BBC television programme (and signifier of the weekend's end) That's Life. That's Life, as readers of a certain age will remember, and as is remarked on during One Life, was a "silly" programme with dogs supposedly saying sausages, vegetables that look like dicks, people giggling at dentists whose names provide amusing nominative determinism, and host Esther Rantzen (played here by Samantha Spiro) visiting service stations and provincial town centres in a vain attempt to 'Get Britain Singing'.

That's Life also employed some of the most jarring segues in television history and these wacky features were interspersed with cutting edge exposes on corruption, child abuse, and school bullying. Across two episodes in 1988, Nicholas Winton appeared on the show and, to his delight (and, one imagines, shock), it was revealed to him that he was sat next to, and amongst, dozens of people whose lives he had saved. Dozens, representing hundreds, of people that were it not for him would not exist.

It's pretty hard to resist a tear at this incredibly emotional reunion and it's highly satisfying to see that Nicholas Winton, later to become known as the British Schindler, finally got the recognition he so richly deserved. More heartwarming still is the feeling you get that for Nicholas Winton it was never about recognition, it was never about him. It was about doing the right thing. It's a message that many in public life today would do well to learn.