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Violet Bonham Carter[1]
Helen Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury,
DBE (15 April 1887 19 February 1969), known until her
marriage as Violet Asquith, was a British politician and
diarist. She was the daughter of Herbert Asquith, Prime
Minister from 1908 1916, and later became active in
Liberal politics herself, being a leading opponent of
appeasement, standing for Parliament and being made a
life peer. She was also involved in arts and literature.
Her illuminating diaries cover her father's premiership
before and during World War I and continue until the
1960s.
She was Sir Winston Churchill's closest female friend,
apart from his wife, and her grandchildren include the
actress Helena Bonham Carter.
Early life
Violet Asquith grew up in a heavily political
environment, living in 10 Downing Street, at the time her
father occupied it, and socialising with the key
political figures of her day. She did not go to school,
but was educated at home by governesses, and later sent
to Paris and Dresden to improve her languages. Her
mother, Helen Kelsall Melland, died of typhoid fever when
Violet was only four. Her stepmother was Margot Tennant.
Her best friend when she was young was Venetia Stanley,
who had an affair with her father. Violet quarreled
constantly with her formidable stepmother Margot, much to
her father's distress; in later life she admitted that
despite their differences, she respected Margot for her
absolute devotion to Asquith.
Violet Bonham Carter's father served a long and
influential term as Prime Minister, especially during the
peacetime portion of his premiership (1908 1914) when he
presided over the People's Budget and the House of Lords
limiting Parliament Act 1911. He was Prime Minister at
the beginning of World War I and then headed a coalition
with the Conservative Party beginning in May 1915 until
his resignation in December 1916. The Liberal Party split
thereafter between followers of Asquith and of David
Lloyd George, who had replaced him as Prime Minister. As
the Liberal Party fell on hard times in the 1920s, she
became a tireless defender of her father and his
reputation, beginning by campaigning for him at the 1920
Paisley by-election.
She was particularly close to Winston Churchill, a
leading member of her father's (and later Lloyd George's)
administration, and whom she (successfully) urged her
father to promote to the Cabinet in 1908. She was
dismayed at his engagement that year to Clementine
Hozier, whom Violet thought as stupid as an owl . In late
August, between his engagement and his marriage,
Churchill spent a holiday with the Asquith family at New
Slains Castle on the Scottish coast, and later admitted
that he had behaved badly to Violet, as they were almost
engaged . Some days after his departure, Violet went
missing one evening, and she was discovered after a
dangerous search by local people, lasting several hours.
Journalists were told that she had slipped and fallen
onto a ledge, hitting her head, but in fact she had been
found lying uninjured near the coastal path. Michael
Shelden suggests that Churchill s holiday with Violet may
have been the reason for Clementine s last-minute threat
to call off their wedding, and that Violet s subsequent
adventure on the cliffs may have been an unhappy young
woman s cry for attention .
Marriage and children
As well as having an illustrious father, she married her
father's Principal Private Secretary, Sir Maurice
"Bongie" Bonham Carter, in 1915. They had four children
together:
- Hon. Helen Laura Cressida, Mrs Jasper Ridley, mother of
the economist Adam Ridley
- Rt. Hon. Mark Bonham Carter, Baron Bonham Carter of
Yarnbury, a Liberal Member of Parliament before going to
the House of Lords and father of Jane, Baroness Bonham
Carter
- Hon. Raymond Bonham Carter, father of the actress
Helena Bonham Carter.
- Hon. Laura Bonham Carter, Lady Grimond, wife of the
Liberal Party leader Joseph Grimond, Baron Grimond of
Firth
Political career[2]
Lady Violet lived in an age when women were uncommon in
frontline British politics. She was nonetheless active as
President of the Women's Liberal Federation (1923 25,
1939 45) and was the first woman to serve as President of
the Liberal Party (1945 47).[2] In the 1945 general
election she stood for Wells, coming third, while in 1951
she stood for the winnable seat of Colne Valley. In the
1953 Coronation Honours she was appointed a Dame
Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).[3]
As an old friend, Churchill arranged for the
Conservatives to refrain from nominating a candidate for
the constituency, giving her a clear run against Labour.
She was nonetheless narrowly defeated. She continued to
be a popular and charismatic speaker for Liberal
candidates, including for her son-in-law Jo Grimond, her
son Mark, and the then-rising star Jeremy Thorpe, and she
was a frequent broadcaster on current affairs programmes
on radio and television.
Perhaps her greatest contribution, however, was as a much-
esteemed orator and perceptive thinker on politics and
policy issues, dedicated to classic Liberal politics in
the mould of her father. She spoke on many platforms
throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and along with Winston
Churchill (and others), she very early on saw the dangers
of European fascism. In seeking to awaken Britain and the
world to the fascist peril, she joined and animated a
number of anti-fascist groups (such as The Focus Group),
often in concert with Churchill, and spoke at many of
their gatherings. In a 1938 speech she mocked Neville
Chamberlain's dealings with Nazi Germany as the policy of
'peace at any price that others can be forced to pay'.[2]
In the postwar years she was an active supporter of the
United Nations and the cause of European Unity,
advocating for Britain's entry into the Common Market.[2]
In the non-political sphere, she was also active in the
arts, including serving as a Governor of the BBC from
1941 46, and a Governor of the Old Vic (1945 69). Her
active political life was combined with air raid warden
duties during the Second World War.[2]
Additionally, she was an avid keeper of diaries, which
now form an important original source for historians of
early 20th century Britain and contain many perceptive
character sketches, as well as insights into contemporary
events. Indeed, it was Lady Violet who in her book
Winston Churchill As I Knew Him (1965), published in the
U.S. as Winston Churchill: An Intimate Portrait, supplied
one of the most famous and telling anecdotes about
Winston Churchill, one apparently not recorded in her
diaries or contemporaneous letters: this recounted how
during the course of a deep conversation at the dinner
party at which they first met, Churchill concluded a
thought with words to the effect that "Of course, we are
all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow worm."[4]
On 21 December 1964, she was created a life peer as
Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury in the County of
Wiltshire,[5] one of the first new Liberal peers in
several decades. She continued to be extremely active in
the House of Lords.
Her previous title, Lady Violet, was a courtesy title
from her father's elevation to the peerage as Earl of
Oxford and Asquith in 1925, and her husband was a knight
of the realm. She and her husband were one of the few
couples who both held titles in their own right.
Death
She died of a heart attack, aged 81, and was interred at
St Andrew's Church, Mells, Somerset.
Titles from birth
- 15 April 1887 30 November 1915: Miss Violet Asquith
- 30 November 1915 1916:[7] Mrs Maurice Bonham Carter
- 1916 9 February 1925: Lady Bonham Carter
- 9 February 1925 1953:[8] Lady Violet Bonham Carter
- 1953 21 December 1964: Lady Violet Bonham Carter, DBE
- 21 December 1964 19 February 1969: The Right
Honourable. The Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury, DBE
Writings
- "Winston Churchill As I Know Him" by Violet Bonham
Carter, in Winston Spencer Churchill Servant of Crown and
Commonwealth, ed Sir James Marchant, London: Cassell,
1954.
- Winston Churchill as I Knew Him, Violet Bonham Carter
(Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1965), published in the USA as
Winston Churchill - An Intimate Portrait
- Lantern Slides - The Diaries and Letters of Violet
Bonham Carter, 1904 1914, eds. Mark Bonham Carter and
Mark Pottle (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996)
- Champion Redoubtable - The Diaries and Letters of
Violet Bonham Carter, 1914 1945, ed. Mark Pottle
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998)
- Daring to Hope - The Diaries and Letters of Violet
Bonham Carter, 1945 1969, ed. Mark Pottle (Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 2000)
References
- Shelden 2013, p180-91
- Pottle, Mark (May 2007). "Carter, (Helen) Violet
Bonham, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury (1887 1969)". Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography, online edn. Oxford
University Press. Retrieved 15 April 2014.
- The London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 39863. p. 2953. 1
June 1953.
- Violet Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill as I Knew Him
(London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1965; published in the
USA as Winston Churchill: An Intimate Portrait), p. 16
- The London Gazette: no. 43522. p. 10933. 22 December
1964.
- "Died". Time magazine. 28 February 1969. Retrieved 2011-
01-03. Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury, 81, grande dame of
British politics and symbol of the Liberal Party's
intellectual-humanist tradition; in London. The daughter
of Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith (1908 16), Lady
Asquith became her party's most eloquent spokesman in the
1930s. She was twice defeated for the House of Commons,
but in 1964 was granted a lifetime peerage and thus a
seat in the House of Lords from which she berated Prime
Minister Wilson for his failure to cope with Britain's
economic woes.
- "Sir Maurice Bonham Carter". The Peerage. 6 July 2010.
- "Lady Helen Violet Asquith, Baroness Asquith of
Yarnbury". The Peerage. 6 July 2010.; the date of her
appointment to the DBE is before 10 November based on
"British Democracy Today and Yesterday" (see Sources).
Further reading
- Shelden, Michael (2013). Young Titan. Simon & Schuster.
ISBN 1-471-11322-1. (A biography of the young Winston
Churchill)
- Lady Violet Bonham Carter, DBE, "British Democracy
Today and Yesterday, the Challenge to the Individual".
The Falconer Lectures, University of Toronto, 10/11
November 1953.
- Violet Asquith at Spartacus Educational, includes
quotations. Accessed June 2008
- Catalogue of the correspondence and papers of Lady
Violet Bonham Carter, 1892 1969, University of Oxford,
Elizabeth Turner 2003
- Lady Violet Bonham-Carter has also been cited many
times in Lynne Olson's 2007 history, Troublesome Young
Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped
Save England (Farrar Straus Giroux, Publ.)
External links
- "Archival material relating to Violet Bonham Carter".
UK National Archives.
- Violet Bonham Carter discussing the women's suffrage
movement
References
1. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/980/519/008/violet-bonham-carter/ (link)
2. http://lynnfletcher40.deviantart.com/art/Violet-Bonham-Carter-666819762 (li…
Date Published: 2017-03-04 00:13:21
Identifier: VioletBonhamCarter
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