The family that rose from the Frankfurt ghetto to become synonymous with wealth and power has been much mythologised. Yet half the Rothschilds, the women, remain virtually unknown.

Natalie Livingstone follows the extraordinary lives of the English branch of the Rothschild women from the late-18th century to the early years of the 21st.

As Jews in a Christian society and women in a deeply patriarchal family, they were outsiders. Excluded from the family bank, they forged their own distinct dynasty of daughters and nieces, mothers and aunts. They became influential hostesses and talented diplomats, choreographing electoral campaigns, advising prime ministers, advocating for social reform and trading on the stock exchange. Misfits and conformists, conservatives and idealists, they mixed with everyone from Queen Victoria to Chaim Weizmann, Rossini to Thelonious Monk, and the Duke of Wellington to Alec Guinness, as well as with amphetamine-dealers, suffragists, and avant-garde artists.

Absorbing and compulsive, The Women of Rothschild gives voice to the complicated, privileged and gifted women who dared to defy the expectations of their family and society, and in doing so shaped history.