My Grandparents' War: Helena Bonham Carter

With a granny called Bubbles and a grandad nicknamed Bongie, Helena Bonham Carter’s family could have come straight from the pages of PG Wodehouse. But don’t be fooled, there are redoubtable characters in the Bonham Carter family tree, as this absorbing sort-of Who Do You Think You Are? at war reveals.

Helena Bonham Carter’s paternal grandmother was the fiery, compassionate and brilliant Liberal politician and equal rights campaigner Lady Violet Bonham Carter, a fearless woman who ended up on a Gestapo blacklist (she’d be arrested and shot in the event of a Nazi invasion of Britain) after she helped Jewish families to flee the encroaching horror of the Holocaust.

On her mum’s side, Helena Bonham Carter’s Spanish grandad, diplomat Eduardo Propper de Callejón, signed – against the rules – countless visas allowing Jewish families to escape to freedom. Bonham Carter meets their descendants.