David Kynaston: Banker and philanthropist

Anthony de Rothschild: Banker and Philanthropist tells the story of the man who influenced modern history. De Rothschild was at the helm of international banking, steering the system from the chaos after the First World War into the modern world. In this evocative new book, historian David Kynaston tells the fascinating story of Anthony de Rothschild (1887–1961). Through access to never previously consulted diaries and letters, a three-dimensional picture emerges of a complex and thoughtful man guiding the City’s most famous merchant bank through the turbulent years between the 1920s and 1950s. In politics he was open-minded and constructive whilst in his philanthropy, not least through his leading role in helping Jewish refugees (especially children) to leave Nazi Germany for England, he was thoughtful and generous. Austere on the surface but warm beneath, impatient equally of fools and idealogues, always searching for how he could contribute to make a better world – Anthony de Rothschild deserves, arguably more than almost anyone else in the twentieth-century City, to be known properly by later generations.

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