Diana Gould

Diana Rosamond Constance Grace Irene Gould, later Diana Menuhin, Baroness Menuhin (12 November 1912 – 25 January 2003) was a British ballerina and occasional actress and singer, who is best remembered as the second wife of the violinist Yehudi Menuhin. As a dancer, however, she was described by Anna Pavlova as the only English dancer she'd seen who "had a soul", and by Arnold Haskell as "the most musical dancer the English have yet produced". but she returned to London to join Marie Rambert's school at the age of nine, and studied with her for ten years. She was tall for a ballerina of that time (, and a tendency to clumsiness led to the nickname "Clumsina".

When she was 14, she partnered Frederick Ashton and danced the premiere of his first ballet, Leda and the Swan. Sergei Diaghilev noticed her and invited her to join his company, but he died before that plan could come about. in such roles as Chiarina in Michel Fokine's Le Carnaval and the Chief Nymph in Vaslav Nijinsky's L'Après-midi d'un faune. Her other roles included the title role in Antony Tudor's Lysistrata. She became the leading dancer of the Arts Theatre Ballet in 1940 and became prima ballerina of Jay Pomeroy's Russian Opera and Ballet Company at the Cambridge Theatre until 1944. He was still married to his Australian wife, Nola (née Nicholas), but that marriage had collapsed. He had two children (a son Krov and a daughter Zamira) and he was four years younger than Diana. He courted her for three years before she finally accepted his proposal. It also appears that the attraction was mutual, as she often seemed to appear wherever he was. They married at the Chelsea Registry Office on 19 October 1947, seventeen days after his divorce from Nola had become final. They had no time for a honeymoon as he had a concert to perform that night.

Yehudi's career became Diana's main purpose from then on, although she often experienced "agonising nostalgia" for her life as a dancer. He regarded her loyalty as unquestionable. They jointly signed their names "Yehudiana".