The novelist Hannah Rothschild recalled how her “nouveau riche” family a century ago had to spend to “make it big in English society”.
Unable to join the local hunt, the members of the famous banking clan “set up their own hounds that hunted from whacking great houses” she told the Hay Digital Festival, an online version of the annual books event that takes place in the Welsh border town
But they were not only trying to impress the neighbours.
“They had to outwealth each other,” the Times reported her as saying. “So each time a Rothschild built a new house it had to be a bit bigger, so you end up with six or seven of these massive houses in the Vale of Aylesbury.”
