David Cameron talked warmly of finding his Jewish roots and said he had spoken about them to one of Britain’s leading rabbinical authorities.

Last July, Yaakov Wise of Manchester University’s Centre for Jewish Studies traced Mr Cameron’s family tree to 16th-century Jewish scholar Elijah Levita, author of the Yiddish chivalric verse romance, the Bovo-Bukh.

The Tory leader consulted Dayan Ehrentreu, former head of the London Beth Din, about his roots, a meeting he called “one of the highlights of my year”.

Mr Cameron’s great-great-grandfather, Emile Levita, was a German émigré banker who became a British citizen in 1871. Emile married out and led the life of a country gentleman as the owner of a grouse moor in Wales. His four sons, like Mr Cameron, went to Eton.