Helen Bonham Carter digs into her heritage in My Grandparents’ War on Channel 4

When she heard that her sons were going off to war in 1942, Lady Violet Bonham Carter sourced two tablets of morphia from Fortnum & Mason. Those were the days! The grandparents of Mark Rylance, Kristin Scott Thomas, Helena Bonham Carter and Carey Mulligan are sadly no longer around, and even the players themselves are getting a little long in the tooth (with the exception of Mulligan). If their wartime exploits are to be aired, now is surely the time. The subjects of this quartet of programmes have been well-chosen, not only for their intrinsic star quality, but for the fascinating stories they uncover.

Mulligan’s grandfather was metres away when his ship was hit in a Kamikaze attack, leaving his granddaughter eager to find out more about the Japanese boy pilots who led such raids. Rylance’s was a prisoner of war in the Far East, while Scott Thomas’s served on the terrifying Arctic convoys funnelling supplies to Russia through sub-haunted seas. But the first episode delves into the undeniably grand background of Helena Bonham Carter, whose paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather opposed the Nazis in strenuous and inventive ways.

Lady Violet Bonham Carter, née Asquith, probably needs less introduction than the other side of Helena’s family. She revisits the sumptuous former family home outside Paris, Royaumont, where grandfather Eduardo Propper de Callejón, a Spanish diplomat, and his wife Bubbles, lived in languid splendour until the outbreak of war. David Pryce-Jones recalls the excitement of having to flee, aged four, with his cousin, Helena’s five-year-old mother Elena, when the Nazi arrival was imminent (“I remember being thrilled”). In his consulate in Bordeaux, Eduardo really set to work, ignoring the Spanish government’s direct orders and signing so many exit visas for Jewish families that, Elena remembers, he had to soak his aching hands at night in salt water.

Lady Violet meanwhile was such a tireless anti-fascist in her speeches and writings that she was put on a Nazi blacklist before war was even declared. An air-raid warden during the Blitz, she also personally sponsored a Jewish man whose distraught wife had appealed to her. Violet’s soldier son Mark disappeared in the maelstrom, and there’s a thoroughly touching exchange of heartbroken letters between her and close friend Winston Churchill. Violet’s command of language is superlative, even in her darkest hours.

A deeply moved Helena meets the descendants of those whose lives were changed forever by their contact with her grandparents, but there are also moments of hilarity. Helena and Elena in particular make a wonderfully eccentric double act. Privileged both sides may have been but when their mettle had to be tested, they didn’t flinch. Hankies most definitely required.

★★★★★

‘My Grandparents’ War’ airs November 27 on Channel 4

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