thumb|right|Brown plaque, [[Holland Park Avenue, London]]
Caroline Middleton Benn (née DeCamp; 13 October 1926 – 22 November 2000), formerly Viscountess Stansgate, was an American-born British educationalist and writer, and the wife of Labour politician Tony Benn (formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate).
Biography
Benn was born Caroline Middleton DeCamp on 13 October 1926, in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, the eldest daughter of Anne Hetherington (née Graydon) and James Milton DeCamp, a Cincinnati lawyer.
Educated at Vassar College (AB, 1946) and the University of Cincinnati (BA, 1948), she travelled to the United Kingdom in 1948 to study at Oxford University and voted for Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party candidate in that year's American Presidential election. She earned an English MA on Jacobean drama (specifically on the masques of Inigo Jones) at University College London in 1951.
She met Tony Benn over tea at Worcester College, Oxford, in 1948, and just 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 house in Holland Park, London.
Death
Benn was diagnosed with breast cancer in June 1996, having been unwell for about a year, but fought the illness for several further years. She became increasingly frail during 2000, having developed spinal metastases, and died at Charing Cross Hospital, London, on 22 November 2000, aged 74.