Caroline Benn

Caroline Middleton Benn (née DeCamp; 13 October 1926 – 22 November 2000), formerly Viscountess Stansgate, was an American-born British educationalist and writer, and the wife of Labour politician Tony Benn (formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate).

Biography Benn was born Caroline Middleton DeCamp on 13 October 1926, in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, the eldest daughter of Anne Hetherington (née Graydon) and James Milton DeCamp, a Cincinnati lawyer.

Educated at Vassar College (AB, 1946) and the University of Cincinnati (BA, 1948), she travelled to the United Kingdom in 1948 to study at Oxford University and voted for Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party candidate in that year's American Presidential election. She earned an English MA on Jacobean drama (specifically on the masques of Inigo Jones) at University College London in 1951.

She met Tony Benn over tea at Worcester College, Oxford, in 1948, and just nine days later he proposed to her on a park bench in the city. Later, he bought the bench from Oxford City Council and installed it in the garden of their house in Holland Park, London.

Death Benn was diagnosed with breast cancer in June 1996, having been unwell for about a year, but fought the illness for several further years. She became increasingly frail during 2000, having developed spinal metastases, and died at Charing Cross Hospital, London, on 22 November 2000, aged 74.

Tribute A Tribute to Caroline Benn: Education and Democracy, edited by her daughter and Clyde Chitty, was published in 2004, featuring essays on her life and on educational reform and her life's work.

Publications Comprehensive School Reform and the 1945 Labour Government (1980), History Workshop Journal Lion in a Den of Daniels (1962), a novel Halfway There: Report on the British Comprehensive School Reform (1970), with Professor Brian Simon Higher Education For Everyone (1982) Keir Hardie: A Biography (1992) Thirty Years On (1997), with Professor Clyde Chitty