Diana Gould

Diana Rosamond Constance Grace Irene Gould, later Diana Menuhin, Baroness Menuhin (12 November 1912 – 25 January 2003) was a British ballerina and occasional actress and singer, who is best remembered as the second wife of the violinist Yehudi Menuhin. As a dancer, however, she was described by Anna Pavlova as the only English dancer she'd seen who "had a soul", and by Arnold Haskell as "the most musical dancer the English have yet produced". Biography Early life Gould was born in Belgravia, London in 1912. Her father was Gerald Gould, a civil servant with the Foreign Office, and her mother was the pianist Evelyn Suart. She had an older brother, Gerard, and a younger sister, Griselda. Her father was of Irish descent but had been brought up in Paris; and her mother had studied in Brussels and Paris. Consequently, Diana was imbued with French culture and language from an early age. Her father died of typhoid fever in 1916, when Diana was aged only three. In 1920, when she was seven, her mother married again, to Cecil Harcourt, a naval officer who eventually became Second Sea Lord and was knighted as Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt in 1945.