| Admin/Biog History | Helen Cressida Ridley (1915-1997) was an archaeologist specializing in Greek prehistory. The granddaughter of British Liberal prime minister H. H. Asquith, she took up archaeology late in life, influenced by childhood experiences in and around her home at Stockton in Wiltshire.
Nicolson socialised regularly with the Bonham-Carter family during the late 1930s: attending debutante balls and staying at each other's houses. In 1939 Cressida Bonham-Carter married Jasper Ridley, a friend of Nicolson's from Oxford. Their life together was brief: Ridley enlisted at the outbreak of the Second World War and was killed in 1943 following an escape from a prisoner-of-war camp in Italy. |
| Description | Includes correspondence of a personal nature concerning a horse-riding accident suffered by Laura Bonham-Carter; arrangements to visit and a thank you note for a wedding gift.
Of particular note:
-letter, dated 23 September 1944, concerning Jasper Ridley (her husband's) escape from a German Prisoner of war camp, subsequent movements and death
Also includes a draft letter written by Nicolson to Ridley on the event of her husband, Jasper Ridley's, death |