Families AT WAR

Helena Bonham Carter explores her grandparents’ bravery during World War Two

- Helena Bonham Carte

World War Two affected the lives of families across the globe. Now, 80 years after the start of the war, four celebrities explore the roles their own grandparents played during the conflict for C4’s new four-part series My Grandparents’ War.

Celebrated British actors Mark Rylance, Kristin Scott Thomas and Carey Mulligan examine their wartime roots later in the series, but, first up is Helena Bonham Carter, who investigates the incredible life-saving work that two of her grandparents undertook during the war.

‘They weren’t conventional war heroes – they didn’t fight in battles or win any medals – but I wanted to discover what they did,’ says the star of The King’s Speech and Suffragette.

Bonham Carter begins by looking at the extraordinary life of her paternal grandmother, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, a liberal politician and close friend of Winston Churchill. During the 1930s, Violet fought passionately against the rise of Nazism and also helped Jewish refugees find asylum in Britain.

A MARKED WOMAN