Early life Rothschild was born in
Kensington, London, the only son of
Charles Rothschild and
Rózsika Rothschild (
née Baroness Edle von Wertheimstein). Both parents were
Jewish, his father a member of the Rothschild banking family and his mother the daughter of the first titled Jew in
Austria. He grew up in
Waddesdon Manor and
Tring Park Mansion, among other family homes. He had three sisters, including
Pannonica de Koenigswarter (who would become known as the "Jazz Baroness") and
Dame Miriam Louisa Rothschild. His father died by suicide when Rothschild was 13 years old. He was educated at Stanmore Park preparatory school (which he later dubbed a "hell hole") and
Harrow School, where the combination of archaic privileges and pointless rituals served only to annoy and bore him.
Cambridge and London At
Trinity College, Cambridge, Rothschild read
physiology,
French, and
English, and was considered impressive enough an undergraduate to be spared the rigours of sitting the Natural Sciences
Tripos, thus allowing him to embark immediately on a career in scientific research. Working in the Zoology Department, he was awarded a fellowship by Trinity in 1935 and a PhD two years later. At Cambridge he was known for his playboy lifestyle, driving a
Bugatti and collecting art and rare books. Rothschild joined the
Cambridge Apostles, a
secret society, which at that time was predominantly
Marxist, though he stated himself that he "was mildly left-wing but never a Marxist". His flat in London was shared with Burgess and Blunt; this later aroused suspicion that he was the so-called Fifth Man in the Spy Ring. In 1933, Rothschild gave Blunt
£100 to purchase "Eliezer and Rebecca" by
Nicolas Poussin. The painting was sold by Blunt's executors in 1985 for £100,000 and is now in the
Fitzwilliam Museum. Rothschild inherited his title at the age of 26 following the death of his uncle
Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild on 27 August 1937. In November 1945 he joined the
Labour Party.
World War II Rothschild was recruited to work for
MI5 during
World War II in roles including bomb disposal, disinformation and espionage, winning the
George Medal for "dangerous work in hazardous circumstances". He was the head of B1C, the "explosives and sabotage section", and worked on identifying where Britain's war effort was vulnerable to sabotage and counter German sabotage attempts. This included personally dismantling examples of German booby traps and disguised explosives. With his assistant
Theresa Clay, he ran the
"Fifth Column" operation, which saw MI5 officer
Eric Roberts masquerade as the
Gestapo's man in London in order to identify hundreds of Nazi sympathizers.
Cold War, Shell and Think Tank In
Who Paid the Piper? (1999), an account of
CIA propaganda during the
Cold War, author
Frances Stonor Saunders alleges that Rothschild channelled funds to
Encounter, an intellectual magazine founded in 1953 to support the "non-Stalinist left" to advance US foreign policy goals. After the war, he joined the
zoology department at
Cambridge University from 1950 to 1970. He served as chairman of the
Agricultural Research Council from 1948 to 1958 and as worldwide head of research at
Royal Dutch/Shell from 1963 to 1970.
Flora Solomon claims in her autobiography that in August 1962, during a reception at the
Weizmann Institute, she told Rothschild that she thought that
Tomás Harris and Kim Philby were Soviet spies. When Anthony Blunt was unmasked as a member of the Cambridge Spy ring in 1964, Rothschild was questioned by
Special Branch (though Blunt was not publicly identified as a Soviet agent until 1979 in the
House of Commons by Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher). Rothschild was cleared and continued working on projects for the British government. Rothschild was head of the
Central Policy Review Staff from 1971 to 1974 (known popularly as "
The Think Tank") a staff which researched policy specifically for the Government until Margaret Thatcher abolished it. In 1971 Rothschild was awarded an honorary degree from
Tel Aviv University for
the advancement of science, education and the economy of Israel. It was followed in 1975 by an honorary degree from Jerusalem's
Hebrew University. The annual "
Victor Rothschild Memorial Symposia" is named after Rothschild.
Thatcher years and Spycatcher In the 1980s, Rothschild joined the family bank as chairman in an effort to quell the feuding between factions led by
Evelyn Rothschild and Victor's son,
Jacob Rothschild. In this, he was unsuccessful as Jacob resigned from the bank to found J. Rothschild Assurance Group (a separate entity, now
St. James's Place plc). In 1982 he published
An Enquiry into the Social Science Research Council at the behest of
Sir Keith Joseph, a Conservative minister and mentor of Margaret Thatcher. Rothschild continued to work in security as an adviser to Margaret Thatcher. He appears several times in the book
Spycatcher, which he hoped would clear the air over suspicions about his wartime role and the possibility he was involved in the
Cambridge spy ring. In early 1987
Tam Dalyell MP used parliamentary privilege to suggest Rothschild should be prosecuted for a chain of events he had "set in train, with Peter Wright and Harry Chapman Pincher" which had led to a "breach of confidence in relation to information on matters of state security given to authors". Rothschild was still able to enter the premises of MI5 as a former employee and was aware of suspicions there was a "mole" in MI5, but felt himself above suspicion. While
Edward Heath was Prime Minister, Rothschild was a frequent visitor to
Chequers, the Prime Minister's country residence. Throughout Rothschild's life, he was a valued adviser on intelligence and science to both Conservative and Labour Governments. In his 1994 book
The Fifth Man, Australian author Roland Perry said that in 1993, after the dissolution of the
Soviet Union, six retired KGB colonels, including
Yuri Modin, the spy ring's handler, alleged Rothschild was the so-called "Fifth Man": "Rothschild was the key to most of the Cambridge ring's penetration of British intelligence" Modin said: "He had the contacts. He was able to introduce Burgess, Blunt and others to important figures in Intelligence such as
Stewart Menzies,
Dick White and
Robert Vansittart in the Foreign Office ... who controlled MI6." However this suggestion is rebutted by other researchers; commentator Sheila Kerr pointed out that as soon as the book came out, Modin denied Perry's version of their discussions (having already stated that the fifth man was Cairncross), and concluded that "Perry's case against Rothschild is unconvincing because of dubious sources and slack methods".
Noel Annan, who was criticised by Roland Perry for a negative view of the latter's book and claims, writes: "Amid clouds of misstatements he [Perry] relies almost wholly on insinuation and bluster. ... when Andrew Boyle published his book and exposed Blunt, why did Margaret Thatcher acknowledge in the House of Commons the truth about Blunt, but later, in the case of Rothschild, clear him? Mr. Perry is saying she lied to the House. He tries to make much of her curt statement, "I am advised that we have no evidence that he was ever a Soviet spy." It is the only official reply she could have made. In MI5 jargon there was "No Trace" against his name".
Christopher Andrew and
Vasili Mitrokhin, in
The Mitrokhin Archives, make no mention of Rothschild as a Soviet agent and instead identify
John Cairncross as the Fifth Man. Former KGB controller Yuri Modin denied ever having named Rothschild as "any kind of Soviet agent". "Because he was in MI5 they learned things from him. This doesn't make him the fifth man, and he wasn't," Modin wrote. His own book's title clarifies the name of all five of the Cambridge spy group:
My Five Cambridge Friends: Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross by Their KGB Controller. Since Rothschild had died prior to the publication of the Perry book, the family was unable to start a libel action. Rothschild published two volumes of memoirs,
Meditations of a Broomstick (1977) and
Random Variables (1984). Rothschild took the step of publishing a letter in British newspapers on 3 December 1986 to state "I am not, and never have been, a Soviet agent". Despite being an opposition Labour party peer, in 1987, during the Thatcher Government, Rothschild reportedly played a role in the dismissal of
Director-General of the BBC Alasdair Milne, who had backed the programmes
Secret Society,
Real Lives, and
Panorama: "
Maggie's Militant Tendency" which had angered the Thatcher government.
Marmaduke Hussey, who was Chairman of the
BBC Board of Governors at the time, implied Rothschild initiated the dismissal of Milne in his autobiography
Chance Governs All. Rothschild was an advisor to
William Waldegrave during the design of the
Community Charge, which subsequently led to the
Poll Tax Riots. ==Family==