Violet Bonham-Carter
Summary
Photograph of Violet Bonham-Carter (Facsimile on Back Stairs)
Provenance
Violet Bonham Carter was born Helen Violet Asquith in April 1887, the only daughter of Herbert Henry Asquith, who was the Prime Minister of Great Britain between 1908 and 1916. Bonham Carter first met Winston Churchill at a dinner party, and following this meeting she announced to her father that she had been in the company of greatness, to which her father remarked “…Winston could certainly agree with you there…” This meeting had been the start of a long friendship which would last both of their lifetimes. Despite the fact that they both differed politically in some areas, they both fervently opposed the policy, advocated by Chamberlain, of appeasement towards the Nazi threat. Bonham Carter publicly denounced Hitlerism and the Nazi Party at a meeting in Scarborough on 18th May 1933, and felt that peace depended on assistance from the League of Nations, an organisation she remained patron of until 1941. As a result of this belief and her efforts in the debate over the threat of Nazism, Churchill gave her a key role in his anti-Fascist Freedom Focus organisation. During the Second World War, when Churchill was Prime Minister he continued to reward her loyalty by including her in the board of governors of the BBC. Violet Bonham Carter’s name appears eleven times in Chartwell’s visitor book, with her last recorded visit being on 13th October 1963.