Charlotte and Lionel - A Rothschild Marriage (Hardcover)

A fascinating insight into the life of the illustrious couple Lionel and Charlotte Rothschild who were blessed with great wealth and a powerful love but oppressed by dogmatic Victorian anti-semitism. Lionel and Charlotte's papers are a vivid snapshot of what it was like to be rich and famous - and different - in mid-Victorian life. With a cast of colourful characters, eminent historian, Stanley Weintraub, tells this as a compelling love story and family chronicle like no other. When Lionel de Rothschild, from the famous banking dynasty, wrote to his mother to thank her 'for my bride', he had just met his cousin Charlotte in Frankfurt. She was sixteen, and beautiful. An arranged family marriage joining two branches of Europe's most powerful banking firm, it seemed an unlikely love match. Yet it lasted through tragedies and triumphs, as Charlotte became one of the grand chatelaines of the Victorian era, while Lionel became England's leading financier, and the first of his faith to win a seat in Parliament. That dramatic campaign was a prolonged battle that, Charlotte wrote, was 'screaming about the house' for eleven years. Despite - perhaps because - of a surfeit of wealth, and her r