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Hello and welcome to the Spectators Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Heath, the Literate for the Spectator's of The Spectator.

And this week my guest is a story, Natalie Livingstone, whose new book is called The Women of Rothschild,

the untold story of the world's most famous dynasty. Natalie, welcome. Obviously, we have heard

through history an awful lot about the Rothschilds, but it's normally the men. What was it that

made you tick? Hang on, there's another story here.

Well, that's exactly it. And I think we all know about the Rothschilds, but it's a traditionally

male narrative. It's about banking and finance. And actually, five years ago, I was having lunch

with Andrew Roberts, the historian. I just finished writing my first

book, The Mistresses of Clivedon, I loved it. And it was about reclaiming the stories of under-researched

women. And Andrew said to me, well, what do you fancy doing next? I said, I don't know. I'm

fascinated by women. I'm fascinated by Jewish history. And he said, what about the Rothschilds? I thought, okay,

the women of the Rothschild family, fabulous. I started delving into it. The first book I read was

a baroness by Hannah Rothschild, which was absolutely gripping. It was the biography of her great

Aunt Nika, the jazz baroness, who left her family in this wonderful, glittering life that she had and moved to New York to become a patron of the jazz scene.

And I thought, OK, these are some interesting women here.

And then I came across this essay by Miriam Rothschild, which began life as a catalogue essay for a 2004 exhibition, which honoured the birth of the founding father of the Rothschild

dynasty, Maya Amschild Rothschild. And in it, Miriam talked about her female ancestors, and she spoke about

this parallel but separate little world that they created. And all of a sudden, I just felt like centuries of history that I kind of

assumed that I knew about were just blown wide open. And there were these stories that were just

ready to be told. And that was what made me think, OK, this is going to be exciting. Yes. And as you say,

at the 20th century, they standout figures of Miriam and Nika Rothschild.

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