Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury

Helen Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury DBE (April 15 1887–February 19 1969) was a British politician and the daughter of Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith by his first wife, Helen. In 1964, she was created a life peer.

Early life

She grew up in a heavily political environment, living in Downing Street at the time her father occupied it, and socialised 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 died of typhoid fever when Violet was four, and relations with her stepmother, Margot Asquith, were always tense.

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 light in the Liberals during her father's (and Lloyd George's) administration, and formed a lifelong friendship with him.

Family

Violet Bonham Carter's family was strongly intertwined with the Liberal Party. Her father is generally considered one of the most successful of British Prime Ministers, especially during the peacetime portion of his premiership (1908 - 1914). He was Prime Minister at the beginning of World War I and then headed a coalition with the Conservative Party beginning in 1915 until turned out as head of the coalition by fellow Liberal Lloyd George in December 1916.

As well as having an illustrious father, she married her father's Principal Private Secretary, Sir Maurice Bonham Carter, nicknamed "Bongie", in 1915. They had four children together, including (Helen Laura) Cressida Bonham Carter (who married Jasper Ridley), Mark Bonham Carter (himself later a Liberal MP), Raymond Bonham Carter and Laura Bonham Carter (who married the Liberal leader Jo Grimond). She is the grandmother of politician Jane Bonham Carter (by Mark) and actress Helena Bonham Carter (by Raymond).

Political career

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 - 1925, and 1939 -1945, and was President of the Liberal Party 1945- 1947. In the 1945 general election she stood for Wells, coming third, while in 1951 she stood for the winnable seat of Colne Valley.

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 mold of her father. She spoke on many platforms throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and along with Winston Churchill (and others), she very early on perceived the dangers of European fascism. In the cause to awake Britain and the world to the fascist danger, she joined and animated a number of anti-fascist groups (e.g., The Focus Group), often in concert with Churchill, and spoke at many of their gatherings.

In the non-political sphere, she was also active in the arts, being a Governor of the BBC 1941-1946, and a Governor of the Old Vic (1945-1969).

Additionally, she was an avid keeper of diaries, which now form an important original source of history of early 20th century Britain and contain many perceptive character sketches, as well as insights into contemporary events. Indeed, it was Lady Violet who supplied one of the most famous — and telling — anecdotes about Winston Churchill (in a book on Churchill published in 1965, the story not apparently having been recorded in her diaries or contemporaneous letters): how Churchill during the course of an intense and deep conversation at a dinner party at which they first met, concluded a thought by saying to the effect that "Of course, we are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow worm."

In 1964, she was created Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury, of Yarnbury in the County of Wiltshire, one of the first new Liberal peers in several decades. (Her previous title, Lady Violet, was a courtesy title from her father's elevation to the peerage as 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith in 1925.) She continued to be extremely active in the House of Lords despite being increasingly beset by illness in her last few years.

She died of a heart attack at the age of 81, and is buried at Mells Church, Somerset.

uggested reading

*"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" ed. 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)

Lady Violet Bonham Carter, D.B.E. "British Democracy Today and Yesterday, the Challenge to the Individual". The Falconer Lectures, University of Toronto November tenth and eleventh 1953.

Lady Violet is also cited many times in Lynne Olson's 2007 history "Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England", published by Farrar Strauss Giroux.

References

* [http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWbonham.htm Violet Asquith] at Spartacus schoolnet, includes quotations. Accessed June 2008
* [http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/modern/bonham-carter/bonham-carter.html Catalogue of the correspondence and papers of Lady Violet Bonham Carter, 1892-1969] , University of Oxford, Elizabeth Turner 2003

External links

* [http://www.jamd.com/search?assettype=g&assetid=3379669&text=Violet+Bonham+Carter Photographs of Violet Bonham Carter] at JAMD.com . Accessed June 2008
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