You may have noticed an odd shaped stone atop a family plot (H012) in the Additional Burial Ground. It is the tombstone for Ianthe Carswell (1917-2001).
Her mother-in-law, Catherine Carswell, will be one of the subjects of my June 6th Tomb Trail, ‘Fascinating Literary Subjects’.
Ianthe has been described as a ‘founding spirit of nuclear disarmament’.
In 1957, she and her friend Sheila Jones founded what they called ‘The National Committee for the Abolition of Nuclear Tests’. She enlisted the sponsorship of Bertrand Russell, E.M. Forster, Michael Foot, and Benjamin Britten (!).
She used to send her daughters out on Hampstead High Street with leaflets for the movement.
She had been in a special unit, during the War, in the Ministry of Economic Warfare. She was later transferred to India where she met up with her childhood sweetheart, John Carswell. (There is a plaque in his memory, next to a tree, in the dividing strip in Church Row.) It was said to become a marriage of ‘deep mutual affection’. John Carswell was supportive of his wife’s good causes.
As well as what became CND, she supported other efforts such as the UN Children’s Fund. Ianthe was known as ‘an extremely good hostess’. I met one of her daughter’s friends who has wonderful memories of staying there.
In the 1980s, Ianthe was the only woman to demonstrate outside Downing Street the day after the bombing of Kosovo began.
You may want to visit the Tomb-with-a-View website to read more about some of Ianthe’s ‘neighbours’ in the Burial Ground.
Carswell H012 in the ABG
Susan Woolf