Nathaniel Rothschild, usually known as “Natty”, was the progeny of a family of Jewish gentleman bankers, the occupation initiated by his grandfather, Nathan Mayer, who was born in Frankfurt and later set up the N M Rothschild bank in the City of London. Born in 1840, the third child and the first son of Nathan’s son, Baron Lionel, and his wife, Charlotte, the young Natty encountered a less than enthusiastic reception from his mother and, as John Cooper indicates in his perceptive and meticulously researched biography, he was marked by a need to prove himself to her.As well as a base in London, Lionel had purchased Tring Park, an estate in Buckinghamshire. Through his countryside pursuits as well as his years at Cambridge, where he read mathematics but left before graduat