The moment she first heard Thelonious Monk play the piano, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter walked out on her own life, including five children, and devoted herself to the American jazz genius. The Rothschild family disowned her, but now her great niece, Hannah Rothschild, tells her extraordinary storyIn the 19th century, the English branch of the powerful and immensely rich Rothschild family built the most famous of their country houses in the Vale of Aylesbury, which is why, one misty morning in late March, I find myself at Waddesdon Manor, a picture-perfect Victorian replica of a French chateau. `I think this house will give you a sense of how the family used to live,` says Hannah Rothschild, my host. `The blinds and curtains drawn to protect the art, the panelling and drapes creating a deadening effect. These were houses that killed noise, even the noise of children.` Overflowing with servants - at Tring Park, down the road, footmen were required to carry cherry trees to the table, that diners might pick their fruit straight from the branch - and run to a routine as immutable as marble, growing up in such a house was like living in a gilded cage.Hannah wants me to soak up this atmosphere, airless and introspective, because she believes that it explains, at least in part, the extraordinary life of her great aunt, Pannonica, aka Nica, the subject of her startling new book, The Baroness. Nica, who was born in 1913, grew up at Tring Park (Tring is now a school; Waddesdon Manor, though administered by a trust under the chairmanship of Hannah`s father, Jacob, was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1957). There, she wiled away her young days in a starched white dress, sewing and playing the piano; her parents did not approve of education for girls and running and hiding were forbidden lest her frock be ruined. Life was monotonous and dull but, knowing nothing else, she did not think to kick against it. In 1934, she was duly presented at court and her marriage i ...
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