Jane Bonham Carter
“Since the age of six I have been visiting the wonderful country that is Italy. My grandmother had a house there. She did not follow the herd and buy a house in Tuscany or Umbria or Porto Ecoli, she built one in the Gulf of Policastro, south of Salerno: Casa Bussento, a magical place where we produce our own olive oil, red wine, vegetables. Indeed, I still remember – Proust-like – the first time I actually tasted a tomato. My childhood experience was of hard red tasteless globes – but then I plucked one from its Italian vine – warmed by Italian sun and nourished by Italian soil – soft, delicious, a gloriously different experience.
But most importantly my very existence is down to the incredible courage of the Italian people in the Second World War. My father, Mark Bonham Carter, having been captured by the Germans in North Africa, at the battle of Mareth, was sent to an Italian prisoner of war camp in Poppi. Like you see in the movies, he and his fellow inmates began digging a tunnel to escape. When the Italians signed the Armistice, the guards left the camp, but the Germans swiftly moved in and began transferring the captured British to Germany.
My father hid himself in the tunnel and was able to slip away when the camp was empty. He then walked with his companion to Allied lines. They would approach the priest of the village they had reached at the end of each day, to ask if there was anywhere they could sleep. Only once were they not given a bed despite the fact that, if discovered, the result would have been catastrophic for their hosts.
Passion for Italy
Unsurprisingly, my father retained a life-long passion for Italy. Something he passed on to his daughters. And how lovely that my youngest sister, the artist Eliza Bonham Carter, now Curator and Director of the Royal Academy Schools, as a student won the Prix de Rome and lived and studied at the British School in the Borghese Gardens.
Before becoming a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords, my career was as a journalist working initially for the BBC at Panorama and Newsnight, then at Channel 4 as Editor of ‘A Week in Politics’, and subsequently for the independent production company Brook Lapping. Then the segue into politics as Director of Communications for the party, and now a peer where I am LD spokesperson for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. I am an active and passionate member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Italy, which is about nourishing and extending links between our two countries. A very exciting addition to our group is Italian-born Manuela Perteghella, Lib Dem MP for Stratford-on-Avon since the last election.
It is somehow fitting that my father died in Italy, suddenly of a heart attack, in a small town we were visiting. I was with him and his last words as he gazed from the walls of a castello were: ‘This is the most romantic place.’ Yet again, the Italian people tried to come to his rescue, pouring out of their homes with pillows and sheets and blankets. A priest arrived: ‘Is he a Catholic?’ he asked me. No, I said. ‘Well, I can see he was a good man,’ and he gave him the last rites.”
Tom Carver
Tom Carver’s background is steeped in knowledge of the PoW story and the Monte San Martino Trust in that he is the son of Colonel Richard Carver, who was imprisoned at PG49 Fontanellato
Tom is the author of Where the Hell have you been?, the best-selling account of Richard’s escape from Fontanellato and trek down Italy. He eventually arrived at Allied HQ on the Sangro river, whereupon his step-father, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, asked him “Where the hell have you been?”. Tom’s book, published in 2009, included a note on MSMT in the Acknowledgements.
Tom, who lives in Washington DC, is a communications strategist with 20 years’ experience advising multinational companies, governments, and international NGOs. He recently served as a senior adviser at the United States Institute of Peace, and set up BRINK, a digital platform on global risk for Atlantic Media.
Tom was in charge of global engagement for Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, managing operations across Carnegie’s centres in Washington, Beirut, Beijing, Brussels, and Moscow. He was previously a senior vice-president at Chlopak, Leonard & Schechter, a Washington-based strategic communications consultancy, and headed the Washington office of Control Risks, one of the world’s leading political risk consultancies.
Washington correspondent
Tom is a former award-winning journalist for the BBC. As the BBC’s Washington correspondent, he covered the aftermath of September 11 and two presidential election campaigns, accompanying President Clinton, President Bush, and Vice-President Cheney on numerous international trips. He was also the BBC’s Africa correspondent, based in Johannesburg for three years. He reported from multiple African countries and chronicled the collapse of South African apartheid and the start of the Rwandan genocide.
His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the London Review of Books, the Sunday Times, the Observer and the New Statesman. Tom was honoured by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his coverage of the September 11 crisis and has been a guest lecturer at the British War College. He serves on several boards, including VSO and CorpsAfrica.