H. H. Asquith Gallery

Wedding of Violet Asquith and Maurice Bonham-Carter

Wedding group at the marriage of Violet Asquith to Maurice Bonham-Carter. Helen Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury, DBE (15 April 1887 19 February 1969) was a British politician and diarist. She was the daughter of H. H. Asquith, Prime Minister from 19081916, 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 a close friend of Sir Winston Churchill and Churchill's son, Randolph, is seen standing to the right of Violet in the wedding group. Others are: top row from left, Miss Kathleen Tennant (later Kathleen Manners when she became wife of the Marquis of Granby, Duke of Rutland), Prime Minister Asquith, the bridgegroom (Asquith's private secretary), Miss Elizabeth Asquith (Asquith's daughter from his second marriage, later Elizabeth Bibesco, the writer). The page boys are from left, Master David and Michael M'Kenna, William Harcourt and Randolph Churchill. Date: 1915

© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans

Suffragette Jessie Kennedy as a telegraph boy

Miss Jessie Kennedy, a suffragette, as a telegraph boy, in the dress in which she sought to gain admission to the Albert Hall to disrupt a Liberal party meeting at which Asquith was speaking. She was caught by a policeman on duty who apparently was suspicious after noticing her shapely hands, her face and the angle of her cap. The Sketch magazine reports with satisfaction that, a thorough search of the great building caused a number of enthusiastic advocates of "Votes for Women" to be dragged into the light of day... Date: 1909

© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans

Zeppelinanities: The airy humour of the Hun by H.M. Bateman

"Zeppelinanities. The airy humour of the Hun: a German air-raider's air-raising narrative illustrated by our caricaturist." This cartoon depicts the German zeppelin raid on London on 8 September 1915, the biggest air raid on Britain of the First World War. 15 high-explosive and 55 incendiary bombs were dropped on the city. Bateman re-tells verbatim the story which a German air-raider told the newspapers: that the hapless crew almost crashed into St. Paul's, and that they refrained from dropping bombs on the Houses of Parliament for fear of killing the families of Lloyd George and Herbert Asquith. Date: 1915

© Estate of H M Bateman/ILN/Mary Evans Picture Library