Violet Bonham Carter

Helen Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury, (15 April 1887 – 19 February 1969), known until her marriage as Violet Asquith, was a British politician and diarist. She was the daughter of H. H. Asquith, Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916, and she was known as Lady Violet, as a courtesy title, from her father's elevation to the peerage as Earl of Oxford and Asquith in 1925. Later she became active in Liberal politics herself, and was a leading opponent of appeasement. She stood for Parliament and became a life peer. She was also involved in arts and literature. Her diaries cover her father's premiership before and during the First World War 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 was born in Hampstead, London, England, and grew up with politics, She lived in 10 Downing Street from 1908, when her father occupied it. She was educated at home by governesses, and later sent to Paris to improve her languages. In 1903 she attended a finishing school in Dresden. Her mother, Helen Kelsall Melland, died of typhoid fever when Violet was four years old. Her stepmother from 1894 was Margot Tennant: their relationship has been described as "stormy". Her four brothers were Raymond, Herbert, Arthur, and Cyril. Violet's best friend when she was young was Venetia Stanley, who later had an intense emotional relationship with her father. Edwardian social life Presented at court in 1905, Violet Asquith entered the social world of parties in her first London season. Sir Charles Tennant, 1st Baronet, Margot's father, hosted with his wife Marguerite a dance in Grosvenor Square for Violet and his granddaughter Frances Tennant, who married in 1912 Guy Lawrence Charteris and was mother of Ann Fleming. Guy's sister Cynthia was one of Violet's close friends, and married her brother Herbert in 1910.