MENHUIN, Hon Zamira 1939-2024

[Richard R]

She was the only dau of the violinist & LP Baron MENUHIN 1916-99 and his 1st w Nola Ruby d of George NICHOLAS of Melbourne, Australia. She m 1st 1960 (div 1969) the concert pianist Fou Ts'ong and had a son. She m 2nd 1975 Jonathan Charles Mackenzie b 1941 3rd s of Sir (Arthur) Paul BENTHALL KBE 1902-1992 sometime head of that gentry family of Benthall and Mary Lucy PRINGLE 1905-88 scion of that gentry family of Whytbank, and had a further two sons.

Obit in the Times of 8 Aug 2024:

Zamira Menuhin obituary: Daughter of the celebrated violinist

Custodian of Yehudi’s legacy who set up Concerts for Children, which helped 800 boys and girls

… According to Tony Palmer’s book Menuhin: A Family Portrait (1991), Zamira was the child to whom Menuhin was closest, and it was she who kept his flame burning after his death in 1999…

… Zamira Ruby Menuhin was born in Los Angeles in 1939, the elder of Menuhin’s two children by his first wife, Nola (née Nicholas), who was from a wealthy Australian family; her younger brother, Krov, became an underwater film-maker in Australia. The name Zamira means “songbird” in Hebrew and in Russian means something akin to “peace”. To mark her birth Nola presented Yehudi with a Guarneri del Gesu violin from 1742.

At the age of six Zamira was taken by her mother to Australia to meet her maternal grandparents. “On the boat [Nola] affected a surprise meeting with a man she knew, who was to be her second husband. Her father, a prominent member of Melbourne society, was horrified and sent her packing. There followed a gruesome time before my parents divorced,” she said…

… At the age of 12 she left her mother to join Menuhin and his second wife, the British actress Diana Gould. She also acquired two half-brothers who survive her: Jeremy, a composer and pianist, and Gerard, who is associated with the neo-Nazi movement in Germany and is estranged from the family…

…[She m in 1960] Fou Ts’ong, a pianist who in 1958 had fled China and sought asylum in Britain, where his first sanctuary had been the Menuhin home… The marriage was dissolved and Fou died of Covid-19 in 2020. Zamira is survived by their son Lin, who is involved with the Yehudi Menuhin School Qingdao in China…

… At the age of 35 she met Jonathan Benthall, a writer and director of the Royal Anthropological Institute, at a dinner party “and it was love at first sight”, she said. They married in 1975 and settled in a manor house near Tunbridge Wells in Kent that had been in his family since the 16th century. He survives her with their sons, Dominic, a criminal barrister, and William, an executive at an urban delivery company in Spain…

Zamira Menuhin, daughter of Yehudi Menuhin, was born on September 29, 1939. She died of complications from dementia on July 31, 2024, aged 84

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/obituaries/article/zamira-menuhin-obituary-daughter-of-the-celebrated-violinist-hw07kz7jq

[Robert Jewell]

The phrasing "criminal barrister" is equivocal; the Times might've clarified this by saying "criminal-law barrister". Of course we in the USA have criminal lawyers, some of whom are in fact criminal lawyers. Our language can be weird.

[Richard R]

From the Times of 9 Aug 2024: BENTHALL Zamira (née Menuhin) on 31st July, aged 84. Died peacefully at home surrounded by family. Funeral Service to be held on Friday 16th August at Pembury Old Church, Pembury... at 2.30pm. No flowers please but donations if desired, payable to The 1930 Fund for District Nurses c/o ER Hickmott & Son…