 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 . 
