Dame Miriam Rothschild with Professor Richard Dawkins, photographed together during a visit to Oundle School Chapel in 2002
The early 20th century writer Marcel Proust, confined by asthma in his later years to self-imposed imprisonment within the cork-lined walls of his Paris home, allowed himself only the occasional nocturnal excursion in his sealed carriage. Heading out towards the countryside, so the story goes, he would drink in the sight of pink and white hawthorn in bloom, flowers about which he had written so lyrically in his masterpiece A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.
A deep admirer of Proust – "he had the most vital of all gifts for a naturalist: a profound and sensitive understanding of the weather", she wrote in her book Butterfly Cooing like a Dove – Miriam Rothschild inspired as many stories about her life and her doings as the great novelist. One vivid picture has her being driven in the countryside around Oundle, scattering wildflower seeds on the roadsides, in a mission inspired by anger at the disappearance from the English landscape of cowslips, harebells, daisies and poppies, "flowers that are now being bulldozed and weedkilled out of our lives," as she put it.
The apparently derelict exterior of her home in Ashton Wold, where she worked and spent most of her life, helped to fuel even more vivid stories. "Guests, on driving into the courtyard, look at the tangle of unkempt plants and wonder uneasily if they have the right address. Can anyone really live here?" she asked with some justification. Tales of a tame fox sitting at lunch with her, of cannabis cultivated for strange experiments, of her mauve outfits and her white Wellingtons – she refused to eat meat, use cosmetics or wear leather – helped to create a picture of Northamptonshire's great eccentrics in the popular imagination.
A distinguished zoologist, Miriam Rothschild was an authority on fleas and butterflies, recognised in her later years as one of the influential voices who have made environmental protection a fashionable issue in the world today. From a German-owned engineering company seeking to beautify a plot of waste ground on its factory site in Corby, to the Prince of Wales establishing a wildflower meadow at Highgrove, his Gloucestershire home, people consulted her on a host of conservation matters. Her regular appearance on television, in mauve dress and matching kerchief, made her familiar to millions.
Born in 1908, Miriam Rothschild inherited her interest in parasitology from her banker father Charles, a keen naturalist who founded the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves as well as studying the biology of fleas while working as a partner of N.M. Rothschild & Sons, the family bank. Educated privately at home, she spent much of her childhood at Tring Park, the Hertfordshire home of her grandfather, the 1st Lord Rothschild, the first Jewish member of the House of Lords. Here she kept as pets an owl and a quail, studied ladybirds and played in the farmyard where she milked and groomed the cows – at the age of four, she was Country Life's "youngest milker." From her uncle Walter, whose memory she was to honour with her book Dear Lord Rothschild (1983), she learnt about more exotic animals: his private zoological museum at Tring included emus, kangaroos and salamanders, as well as more than two million butterflies and moths, and 144 giant tortoises. He is celebrated, among other things, for driving down Piccadilly and into Buckingham Palace in a buggy pulled by zebras.
Neither her father nor her uncle had shown much regard for conventional education, and although Miriam did enrol at the University of London she never received a formal degree and was somewhat dismissive of exam systems. "The types of tests devised by the appropriate authorities in Britain today assess the size of the child's bottom rather than that of its head", she was quoted as saying, in an article about her published in 1984. She was, however, a keen sportswoman in her teens, excelling to international standard in cricket and squash.
Seeking experience in parasitology, she took a post at the Marine Biological Association research station in Plymouth, investigating marine snails and the effect on their development of flatworm parasites. A 1938 paper on territorialism in black-headed gulls presented to the Zoological Society helped to establish her reputation. When war broke out the following year, she was employed by the Government to research the spread of TB in cattle caused by wood pigeons.
Her Jewish family made Miriam Rothschild more aware than most people of the inevitability of World War II. "This country was so sleepy compared to the continent; they knew a war was coming," she recalled. "It was like a sort of dreamland in England."
As antisemitic persecution grew in Europe during the 1930s, Miriam Rothschild used Ashton Wold, the 1,200-acre estate which her father had been given, as a refuge for 49 Jewish children aged between nine and fourteen whom she adopted and brought out of Germany. Charles Rothschild had died in 1923 when Miriam was 15, but he had renewed Ashton, providing running water for the residents. His daughter now found herself appointed as air-raid warden for the village.
In addition to her wartime agricultural research, Miriam Rothschild also spent time at Bletchley Park working on the secret project of decoding German communications sent by the Enigma machine. This was until her marriage to the Hungarian exile George Lane, whom she met at that time. Her husband's dangerous work as a commando engaged in cross-Channel intelligence-gathering operations meant that she was allowed to be billeted with him at training camps on the South coast. "Altogether we lived a very peculiar life", she recalled. With Captain Lane being away on raids almost every night, "we never knew if we would see each other again. It was very hectic - I was expecting our first child. I don't know how I survived it."
When George Lane was captured during one of these raids, and subsequently interned as a prisoner of war, Miriam Rothschild returned to Ashton. The area had been transformed by the arrival of 6,000 men from the USAAF at Polebrook Airfield, bordering the Ashton Estate, and she found herself welcoming and befriending many of them at Ashton. Among them was the Hollywood star Clark Gable, whom she remembered as a crack shot with the local rooks but lacking in any sense of humour. He was, however, grateful to her as a chaperone at the airbase parties; she recalled the apprehension he felt, surrounded by over-excited hospital nurses desperate to come away with a piece of his underwear.
Looking back on her wartime memories, particularly of Polebrook, Miriam Rothschild was adamant in her sense of the debt owed by the generations who escaped the threat of Nazi domination. "I don't think we realised how much we owed the Americans. They were incredibly brave, incredibly tough, incredibly dedicated, and I don't know what would have happened here if we hadn't had the American Air Force stationed at Polebrook and the various other places from where they operated. We must always be deeply grateful."
Many years later, when Ashton Estates announced its intention to terminate Oundle School's lease on Elmington Range, the Headmaster and the Bursar of the time made a last-ditch attempt to save this facility for the School's cadet force. A meeting was arranged at Ashton, where the owner was present along with her Estates Manager. "Mrs Lane," said the Bursar, G.I. Milton, an ex-Army man. "You do know that generations of Oundle School CCF have used Elmington Range for shooting practice. And almost all those former pupils served in the war." A few moments' silence passed before Miriam Rothschild spoke. "You're absolutely right, of course." And the School's use of Elmington Range has continued until this day.
After the war, Miriam Rothschild continued to research the biology of parasites, notably of fleas, publishing numerous papers. Among her observations at this time was her discovery of a fluid in fleas' hip-joints which allows them to develop an acceleration 20 times greater than that of a moon rocket re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. Her book Fleas, Flukes and Cuckoos (1952), written in collaboration with Theresa Clay, formerly of the Natural History Museum, proved that she could communicate science in a lively and witty fashion. Between 1953 and 1983 she was responsible for co-editing the six volumes of the Catalogue of the Rothschild Collection of Fleas in the British Museum. As an authority of the subject of rabbit fleas, she served on the Government's advisory committee set up following the myxomatosis outbreak of 1954.
For those who know Ashton's pub The Chequered Skipper – until the 1940s it was called The Three Horseshoes – it would come as no surprise that butterflies were Miriam Rothschild's second great area of enthusiasm and study. One of her major contributions to our knowledge of these insects was her research into the way that they use toxic plant substances, not to sustain growth, but for defensive purposes. Ashton Wold's greenhouses were full of Cabbage Whites, Monarch and other butterflies feeding on a variety of specially grown plants, hence her licence to grow cannabis for the purpose. Her investigations into such matters led her into study generally of the way in which insects use mimicry of both scent and warning colouration to discourage predators.
Her book Butterfly cooing like a Dove (1991) combined her passion for zoology with her love of literature and the arts. She wrote it to demonstrate that "one can find considerable enjoyment by mixing up the poetry of words or line with technical facts concerning natural history." Her devotion to the latter area had not been painless, she explained, and the book was a reflection of the daydreams which over the years had consoled her "for the harsh necessity of counting the bristles on the backsides of waistless, wingless fleas."
Official recognitions for the hard work of her research were numerous in her lifetime. She was honoured with many doctorates and fellowships worldwide. She was President of the Royal Entomological Society, receiving its Wigglesworth Gold Medal. She received the H.H. Bloomer Medal from the Linnean Society of London in 1968, also receiving the Victoria Medal, its highest award, from the Royal Horticultural Society. She was a Trustee of the Natural History Museum from 1967 to 1975, was appointed CBE in 1982 for services to taxonomy, and in 1985 gave the Romanes Lecture at Oxford entitled 'Animals and Men.' The same year saw her elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. She became a Dame in the New Year's Honours List of 2000.
Outside the world of insects, Miriam Rothschild threw herself into supporting a broad range of civic and social causes. Her home was a meeting-place for politicians, writers and artists, as well as for scientists and students. She campaigned for free milk in schools, supported the legislation of homosexual acts between consenting adults, and advocated the wearing of car seat-belts, which she claimed to have invented. She championed the better treatments of animals on the farm and in laboratories. Her humanitarian activities included founding the Schizophrenia Research Fund after the death of her sister, who suffered from the disease. For many years the farm buildings behind the Chequered Skipper in Ashton housed the Adamson Collection of paintings by mentally ill artists; the collection is now based at Lambeth Hospital in London.
Among her other local achievements she helped to establish the world-famous Ashton International Conker Championship, and in 1996 to set up the National Dragonfly Museum in Ashton Mill. But, like another close contemporary of hers with Oundle links, the co-founder of the World Wildlife Fund Sir Peter Scott, it is mainly for the cause of nature conservation that she will be remembered. She took a keen interest in conservation issues such as the protection of green lanes in the Oundle area, and was Patron of the local Wildlife Trust. The 150 acres of meadow garden that she planted at Ashton Wold – "John Clare's countryside remembered" as she called it – created to host the butterflies and insects that she loved, have left their legacy in the profusion of wildflowers along Oundle's roadsides. This is surely the most fitting memorial to Miriam Rothschild. She is survived by a son and three daughters.
Dame Miriam Rothschild DBE, FRS, zoologist, writer, gardener and conservationist, was born on 5 August 1908. She died at Ashton Wold on 20 January 2005, aged 96.
I wrote this obituary for the Spring 2005 issue of The Oundle Chronicle.
A deep admirer of Proust – "he had the most vital of all gifts for a naturalist: a profound and sensitive understanding of the weather", she wrote in her book Butterfly Cooing like a Dove – Miriam Rothschild inspired as many stories about her life and her doings as the great novelist. One vivid picture has her being driven in the countryside around Oundle, scattering wildflower seeds on the roadsides, in a mission inspired by anger at the disappearance from the English landscape of cowslips, harebells, daisies and poppies, "flowers that are now being bulldozed and weedkilled out of our lives," as she put it.
The apparently derelict exterior of her home in Ashton Wold, where she worked and spent most of her life, helped to fuel even more vivid stories. "Guests, on driving into the courtyard, look at the tangle of unkempt plants and wonder uneasily if they have the right address. Can anyone really live here?" she asked with some justification. Tales of a tame fox sitting at lunch with her, of cannabis cultivated for strange experiments, of her mauve outfits and her white Wellingtons – she refused to eat meat, use cosmetics or wear leather – helped to create a picture of Northamptonshire's great eccentrics in the popular imagination.
A distinguished zoologist, Miriam Rothschild was an authority on fleas and butterflies, recognised in her later years as one of the influential voices who have made environmental protection a fashionable issue in the world today. From a German-owned engineering company seeking to beautify a plot of waste ground on its factory site in Corby, to the Prince of Wales establishing a wildflower meadow at Highgrove, his Gloucestershire home, people consulted her on a host of conservation matters. Her regular appearance on television, in mauve dress and matching kerchief, made her familiar to millions.
Born in 1908, Miriam Rothschild inherited her interest in parasitology from her banker father Charles, a keen naturalist who founded the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves as well as studying the biology of fleas while working as a partner of N.M. Rothschild & Sons, the family bank. Educated privately at home, she spent much of her childhood at Tring Park, the Hertfordshire home of her grandfather, the 1st Lord Rothschild, the first Jewish member of the House of Lords. Here she kept as pets an owl and a quail, studied ladybirds and played in the farmyard where she milked and groomed the cows – at the age of four, she was Country Life's "youngest milker." From her uncle Walter, whose memory she was to honour with her book Dear Lord Rothschild (1983), she learnt about more exotic animals: his private zoological museum at Tring included emus, kangaroos and salamanders, as well as more than two million butterflies and moths, and 144 giant tortoises. He is celebrated, among other things, for driving down Piccadilly and into Buckingham Palace in a buggy pulled by zebras.
Neither her father nor her uncle had shown much regard for conventional education, and although Miriam did enrol at the University of London she never received a formal degree and was somewhat dismissive of exam systems. "The types of tests devised by the appropriate authorities in Britain today assess the size of the child's bottom rather than that of its head", she was quoted as saying, in an article about her published in 1984. She was, however, a keen sportswoman in her teens, excelling to international standard in cricket and squash.
Seeking experience in parasitology, she took a post at the Marine Biological Association research station in Plymouth, investigating marine snails and the effect on their development of flatworm parasites. A 1938 paper on territorialism in black-headed gulls presented to the Zoological Society helped to establish her reputation. When war broke out the following year, she was employed by the Government to research the spread of TB in cattle caused by wood pigeons.
Her Jewish family made Miriam Rothschild more aware than most people of the inevitability of World War II. "This country was so sleepy compared to the continent; they knew a war was coming," she recalled. "It was like a sort of dreamland in England."
As antisemitic persecution grew in Europe during the 1930s, Miriam Rothschild used Ashton Wold, the 1,200-acre estate which her father had been given, as a refuge for 49 Jewish children aged between nine and fourteen whom she adopted and brought out of Germany. Charles Rothschild had died in 1923 when Miriam was 15, but he had renewed Ashton, providing running water for the residents. His daughter now found herself appointed as air-raid warden for the village.
In addition to her wartime agricultural research, Miriam Rothschild also spent time at Bletchley Park working on the secret project of decoding German communications sent by the Enigma machine. This was until her marriage to the Hungarian exile George Lane, whom she met at that time. Her husband's dangerous work as a commando engaged in cross-Channel intelligence-gathering operations meant that she was allowed to be billeted with him at training camps on the South coast. "Altogether we lived a very peculiar life", she recalled. With Captain Lane being away on raids almost every night, "we never knew if we would see each other again. It was very hectic - I was expecting our first child. I don't know how I survived it."
When George Lane was captured during one of these raids, and subsequently interned as a prisoner of war, Miriam Rothschild returned to Ashton. The area had been transformed by the arrival of 6,000 men from the USAAF at Polebrook Airfield, bordering the Ashton Estate, and she found herself welcoming and befriending many of them at Ashton. Among them was the Hollywood star Clark Gable, whom she remembered as a crack shot with the local rooks but lacking in any sense of humour. He was, however, grateful to her as a chaperone at the airbase parties; she recalled the apprehension he felt, surrounded by over-excited hospital nurses desperate to come away with a piece of his underwear.
Looking back on her wartime memories, particularly of Polebrook, Miriam Rothschild was adamant in her sense of the debt owed by the generations who escaped the threat of Nazi domination. "I don't think we realised how much we owed the Americans. They were incredibly brave, incredibly tough, incredibly dedicated, and I don't know what would have happened here if we hadn't had the American Air Force stationed at Polebrook and the various other places from where they operated. We must always be deeply grateful."
Many years later, when Ashton Estates announced its intention to terminate Oundle School's lease on Elmington Range, the Headmaster and the Bursar of the time made a last-ditch attempt to save this facility for the School's cadet force. A meeting was arranged at Ashton, where the owner was present along with her Estates Manager. "Mrs Lane," said the Bursar, G.I. Milton, an ex-Army man. "You do know that generations of Oundle School CCF have used Elmington Range for shooting practice. And almost all those former pupils served in the war." A few moments' silence passed before Miriam Rothschild spoke. "You're absolutely right, of course." And the School's use of Elmington Range has continued until this day.
After the war, Miriam Rothschild continued to research the biology of parasites, notably of fleas, publishing numerous papers. Among her observations at this time was her discovery of a fluid in fleas' hip-joints which allows them to develop an acceleration 20 times greater than that of a moon rocket re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. Her book Fleas, Flukes and Cuckoos (1952), written in collaboration with Theresa Clay, formerly of the Natural History Museum, proved that she could communicate science in a lively and witty fashion. Between 1953 and 1983 she was responsible for co-editing the six volumes of the Catalogue of the Rothschild Collection of Fleas in the British Museum. As an authority of the subject of rabbit fleas, she served on the Government's advisory committee set up following the myxomatosis outbreak of 1954.
For those who know Ashton's pub The Chequered Skipper – until the 1940s it was called The Three Horseshoes – it would come as no surprise that butterflies were Miriam Rothschild's second great area of enthusiasm and study. One of her major contributions to our knowledge of these insects was her research into the way that they use toxic plant substances, not to sustain growth, but for defensive purposes. Ashton Wold's greenhouses were full of Cabbage Whites, Monarch and other butterflies feeding on a variety of specially grown plants, hence her licence to grow cannabis for the purpose. Her investigations into such matters led her into study generally of the way in which insects use mimicry of both scent and warning colouration to discourage predators.
Her book Butterfly cooing like a Dove (1991) combined her passion for zoology with her love of literature and the arts. She wrote it to demonstrate that "one can find considerable enjoyment by mixing up the poetry of words or line with technical facts concerning natural history." Her devotion to the latter area had not been painless, she explained, and the book was a reflection of the daydreams which over the years had consoled her "for the harsh necessity of counting the bristles on the backsides of waistless, wingless fleas."
Official recognitions for the hard work of her research were numerous in her lifetime. She was honoured with many doctorates and fellowships worldwide. She was President of the Royal Entomological Society, receiving its Wigglesworth Gold Medal. She received the H.H. Bloomer Medal from the Linnean Society of London in 1968, also receiving the Victoria Medal, its highest award, from the Royal Horticultural Society. She was a Trustee of the Natural History Museum from 1967 to 1975, was appointed CBE in 1982 for services to taxonomy, and in 1985 gave the Romanes Lecture at Oxford entitled 'Animals and Men.' The same year saw her elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. She became a Dame in the New Year's Honours List of 2000.
Outside the world of insects, Miriam Rothschild threw herself into supporting a broad range of civic and social causes. Her home was a meeting-place for politicians, writers and artists, as well as for scientists and students. She campaigned for free milk in schools, supported the legislation of homosexual acts between consenting adults, and advocated the wearing of car seat-belts, which she claimed to have invented. She championed the better treatments of animals on the farm and in laboratories. Her humanitarian activities included founding the Schizophrenia Research Fund after the death of her sister, who suffered from the disease. For many years the farm buildings behind the Chequered Skipper in Ashton housed the Adamson Collection of paintings by mentally ill artists; the collection is now based at Lambeth Hospital in London.
Among her other local achievements she helped to establish the world-famous Ashton International Conker Championship, and in 1996 to set up the National Dragonfly Museum in Ashton Mill. But, like another close contemporary of hers with Oundle links, the co-founder of the World Wildlife Fund Sir Peter Scott, it is mainly for the cause of nature conservation that she will be remembered. She took a keen interest in conservation issues such as the protection of green lanes in the Oundle area, and was Patron of the local Wildlife Trust. The 150 acres of meadow garden that she planted at Ashton Wold – "John Clare's countryside remembered" as she called it – created to host the butterflies and insects that she loved, have left their legacy in the profusion of wildflowers along Oundle's roadsides. This is surely the most fitting memorial to Miriam Rothschild. She is survived by a son and three daughters.
Dame Miriam Rothschild DBE, FRS, zoologist, writer, gardener and conservationist, was born on 5 August 1908. She died at Ashton Wold on 20 January 2005, aged 96.
I wrote this obituary for the Spring 2005 issue of The Oundle Chronicle.
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