Anne Asquith

Anne Mary Celestine Asquith, Countess of Oxford and Asquith (née Palairet; 14 November 1916 – 19 August 1998) was a British code breaker who became the Countess of Oxford and Asquith upon her marriage in 1947 to Julian Asquith, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Asquith.

Anne Asquith
Born
Anne Mary Celestine Palairet

14 November 1916
Paris, France
Died19 August 1998
Frome, England
NationalityBritish
EducationSt Anne's College, Oxford
Known forCode breaking
SpouseJulian Asquith, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Asquith (m. 1947)
Children5

Life

She was born in Paris in 1916 to Sir Michael Palairet, a career diplomat,[1] and his wife, Lady Mary de Vere Palairet (née Studd; 1895-1977), and brought up in the Roman Catholic faith to which her parents had converted.

She was raised in Japan, China and Bucharest, where she would help her father by decoding messages that had been sent to him. In Japan, she survived an earthquake when she was six and later, her family was present during the Chinese civil war. She had an affection for Bucharest, where she took the baccalaureate and learnt French.

She continued her studies in Paris[2] before studying at St Anne's College, Oxford, although she did not take her finals.[1] At college, she met Julian Asquith, who was already the Earl of Oxford and Asquith. They were to marry years later.[2]

During World War II, she worked at the code breaking centre of Bletchley Park, exploiting her knowledge of linguistics and codes,[2] before joining the WAAF. They sent her to Palestine in 1945, where she should have been off-duty at the King David Hotel when it was bombed in 1946, but serendipity saw her exchange shifts, and she was working elsewhere when the bomb went off.[1]

Marriage and children

She married Julian Asquith, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Asquith, at the Brompton Oratory in 1947. Her husband took diplomatic postings in Libya, Zanzibar, and St Lucia, and he was the governor in the Seychelles.[1] At that time, one could not fly easily to these islands, but ships occasionally visited them.[2]

Lord and Lady Oxford had five children – two sons, both diplomats, and three daughters (the middle one married to another diplomat):

Lord Oxford inherited the estate of Mells Manor from his mother Katharine Asquith, younger daughter of Sir John Horner, of Mells, and his wife Lady Frances (née Graham).

Lady Oxford died in Frome in 1998.[2] Lord Oxford died, aged 94, on 16 January 2011.[6] He was succeeded in his peerage titles, which he had held for over eighty years, by their elder son, Raymond, a former British diplomat and elected hereditary member of the House of Lords.

References
  1. Neville, P. (23 September 2004). Palairet, Sir (Charles) Michael (1882–1956), diplomatist. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 8 December 2017, see link
  2. "Obituary: The Countess of Oxford and Asquith". The Independent. 7 September 1998. Archived from the original on 7 May 2022. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
  3. L. G. Pine, The New Extinct Peerage 1884–1971: Containing Extinct, Abeyant, Dormant and Suspended Peerages with Genealogies and Arms (London: Heraldry Today, 1972), pp. 16, 276
  4. Charles V Kidd, David Williamson, eds., Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage (Debrett's Peerage Ltd, 1990, ISBN 0312046405), p. 950
  5. Burke's Peerage, volume 2 (2003), p. 3,036
  6. "Obituaries – The Earl of Oxford and Asquith". The Daily Telegraph. 17 January 2011.
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