A new chapter for the mistress of Cliveden

Natalie Livingstone’s background is just about as classically Anglo-Jewish as it is possible to be. The daughter of a Golders Green Synagogue chazan, she grew up with her two sisters in a Shomer Shabbat household in Finchley, attended North West London Jewish Day School, and was married by Jonathan Sacks. But she is certainly a long way from being the typically exclusivist, ironically challenged Jew of Corbynista imaginings. She sees Jews as part of a colourful fabric wherein the best of Jewish sits comfortably alongside the best of anything else.

Moreover, Livingstone has the means to deliver the best, and does — as visitors to next weekend’s 2018 Cliveden Literary Festival will discover. Audiences will be able to see and hear a wide range of speakers, from Armando Iannucci, Hanif Kureishi, Edmund De Waal and Anthony Beevor to Sarah Waters, Anne McElvoy, Priti Patel and HRH Princess Michael of Kent. There will also be a strong Jewish presence — though not quite as ubiquitous as last year’s.

While participants in 2017 included the likes of Ian McEwan, Sebastian Faulks, Andrew Roberts and Robert Harris, the festival nevertheless had the feel of a mini Jewish Book Week. This was not accidental, as was evident from an early session marking the centenary of the Balfour Declaration.

Taking part in a panel discussion on Balfour and Zionism with Professor David Reynolds, Livingstone’s director of studies a couple of decades earlier at Christ’s College, Cambridge (where she gained a first-class degree in History) were Jacob Rothschild, Howard Jacobson, Simon Sebag Montefiore and Simon Schama.

It remains a vivid memory. “I had goosebumps,” Livingstone recalls. “I couldn’t believe that such a collection of minds were on the stage talking about a subject that is so important to me and the Jewish community. And, of course, the irony wasn’t lost on me that they were seated in the Great Hall right next to a portrait of [former First Lady of Cliveden] Nancy Astor, who was a vehement antisemite. I felt it was a triumph of the Jewish spirit.”

The two Simons, Schama and Sebag Montefiore, will be returning this year and Alain De Botton, Stephen Frears and Jonathan Freedland will be among around 65 participants peddling their wares. The whole thing climaxes on Sunday the 30th with Natalie Livingstone herself talking to Naomi Wolf. “I am incredibly excited about meeting her and having the privilege of interviewing her,” Livingstone says. “I devoured The Beauty Myth when it came out.”

Quite apart from her own festival, Livingstone is no stranger to literary performance. After husband Ian had bought Cliveden, Natalie fell in love with the place and decided to write a book about it. The result, three years later, The Mistresses of Cliveden, the story of an institution “involving the giants of British and international history” launched her on to the literary circuit.

“When I started researching,” she says, “I was expecting to find Churchill, Queen Victoria, Garibaldi, but I wasn’t expecting to find that Cliveden hosted and inspired so many literary giants — Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Tennyson and then, in the 20th century, a who’s-who of literati: George Bernard Shaw, H G Wells, Rudyard Kipling. All of them went to Cliveden, loved Cliveden, wrote about Cliveden, were inspired by Cliveden.

“And, after my book was published, I too was inspired by Cliveden. I thought: ‘what could be a better way to honour the legacy of these writers than to have a literary festival?’ Literature, books and the written word are so much a part of Cliveden’s history, it would have been criminal not to have revived that.”

In this, second year of that revival, the Livingstones and Cliveden received a boost by hosting Meghan Markle the night before her wedding to Prince Harry.

“It certainly helped festival tickets fly off the shelves,” says Natalie. “It was wonderful for Cliveden to host a royal bride before a royal wedding — but then Cliveden has always had a very strong royal connection. And Meghan Markle ushered in a whole new chapter of British royal history.”

Not content with providing such high-level hospitality, running a literary festival, working on another book — about the women of the Rothschild family — and struggling to imbue her three young daughters with a love of reading, Livingstone is keen to rebuild her journalistic career and do more for Tatler magazine, among several for whom she has written.

And there is yet another project she dreams of: “I’ve never found a shul that I feel really comfortable with. If I had the time, and the knowledge, I’d set up a lovely synagogue in London. Especially now when it’s not a great time for the Jewish community. I feel there’s a gaping hole.”