 Benn met Caroline Middleton DeCamp (born 13 October 1926, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States) over tea at Worcester College, Oxford, in 1949 and nine days later he proposed to her on a park bench in the city. Later, he bought the bench from Oxford City Council and installed it in the garden of their home in Holland Park. Tony and Caroline had four children – Stephen, Hilary, Melissa, a feminist writer, and Joshua – and ten grandchildren. Caroline Benn died of cancer on 22 November 2000, aged 74, after a career as an educationalist.
