Natalie Livingstone Livres

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Mistresses of Cliveden, an enthralling, sumptuous and surprising history of the Rothschild women

"From its dawn in the 1660s to its twilight in the 1960s, Cliveden was an emblem of elite misbehaviour and intrigue. Conceived by the Duke of Buckingham as a retreat for his scandalous affair with Anna-Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury, the house later served as the backdrop for the Profumo Affair, which would bring down a government and change the course of British history. In the three hundred years between the Countess and Christine Keeler, the house was occupied by a dynasty of remarkable women: Elizabeth Villiers, an intellectual who brokered the rise and fall of governments; Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, a minor German royal who almost became queen of England; Harriet Duchess of Sutherland, the glittering society hostess turned political campaigner; and Nancy Astor, the consummate controversialist who became the first woman to take a seat in parliament. Under the direction of these women, Cliveden provided a stage for political plots and artistic premieres, hosted grieving monarchs and republican radicals, was idealised as a family home, and maligned as a threat to national security"--Cover jacket flap

Ihre Dinnerpartys waren legendär, sie haben Wahlkämpfe choreographiert, sich für soziale Reformen eingesetzt, an der Börse gehandelt und wissenschaftlich geforscht. Hinter den Kulissen hielten sie die Fäden in der Hand, aber in Erscheinung traten immer nur ihre Männer: die Frauen der mächtigen Rothschilds. Die Biographien dieser charismatischen Personen lässt die Historikerin Natalie Livingstone nun in ihrem Buch wieder aufleben. Beginnend mit Gutle Rotschild, der Mutter der Dynastie, beschreibt sie die faszinierenden Lebensgeschichten der bislang unterschätzen Seite der Familie. Entstanden ist nicht nur eine Würdigung, sondern ein völlig neuer Blick auf 200 Jahre europäischer Geschichte.