The Women of Rothschild

'Captivating, intimate, dazzling epic and revelatory' SIMON SEBAG-MONTEFIORE

The story of the family who rose from the Frankfurt ghetto to become
synonymous with wealth and power has been much mythologized. Yet half the
Rothschilds, the women, remain virtually unknown.

From the East End of London to the Eastern seaboard of the United States, from
Spitalfields to Scottish castles, from Bletchley Park to Buchenwald, and from
the Vatican to Palestine, Natalie Livingstone follows the extraordinary lives
of the English branch of the Rothschild women from the dawn of the nineteenth
century to the early years of the twenty first.

As Jews in a Christian society and women in a deeply patriarchal family, they
were outsiders. Determined to challenge and subvert expectations, they
supported each other, building on the legacies of their mothers and aunts.
They became influential hostesses and talented diplomats, choreographing
electoral campaigns, advising prime ministers, advocating for social reform
and trading on the stock exchange. Misfits and conformists, conservatives and
idealists, performers and introverts, they mixed with Rossini and Mendelssohn,
Disraeli, Gladstone and Chaim Weizmann, amphetamine-dealers, temperance
campaigners, Queen Victoria, and Albert Einstein. They broke code, played a
pioneering role in the environmental movement, scandalised the world of
women's tennis by introducing the overarm serve and drag-raced with Miles
Davies in Manhattan.

Absorbing and compulsive THE WOMEN OF ROTHSCHILD gives voice to the
complicated, privileged and gifted women whose vision and tenacity shaped
history.