As I Remember - Lady Asquith

Lady Asquith in conversation with Kenneth Harris. Still perhaps better remembered as Lady Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith celebrated her eightieth birthday on April 15 1967.

In this programme she recalls luncheon with Mr. Gladstone when she was six; talks about her father, who became Prime Minister in 1908; about Lloyd George who succeeded him in 1916 and about Winston Churchill whom she first met as a girl of nineteen.

The programme was shown on BBC1 on April 13: produced for television by Margaret Douglas. It was also broadcast on radio - this is the radio version.

She was the politically active daughter of UK Prime Minister H.H. Asquith (1908-1916), a prominent Liberal politician in her own right, a devoted friend to Winston Churchill. She became a Life Peer in 1964, served on the BBC Board of Governors and was the Liberal Party's first female President, and was the grandmother of actress Helena Bonham Carter.

Kenneth Harris wrote: Talking to her on four successive afternoons, I could never take my eyes off her; her face, so dramatic, so mobile, so hypnotic, added an extra significance to everything she said. I wondered then whether vision here did some disservice to the sound, pictures almost distracting the listener from the narrative. I wondered whether sound radio may not have been the better medium for her. I look forward to finding out.

Produced by George Angell

First broadcast on the BBC Light Programme on 7th July 1967.