464 • ROTHSCHILD, LORD
cutting his own throat in October 1923 when young Victor was not
yet 13. At Cambridge he was a member of theApostles, and he knew
all theCambridge Five, but his years at the university were blighted
by a car accident that resulted in his prosecution for manslaughter.
The trial caused his imminent 21st birthday party to be canceled, and
he later married Barbara Hutchinson, the daughter of the defense
counsel who secured his acquittal.
Recruited intoMI5in 1940 Rothschild found a niche for himself
as the Security Service’s resident scientist and expert on sabotage.
He had become known to the Security Service after he had submitted
a paper on the subject of the German banking system to the War Of-
fice. His proposition was that Nazi intentions could be predicted by
monitoring certain financial and other transactions. Little came of the
idea but, as a scientist, Rothschild’s skills were attractive to MI5 and
he was effectively given carte blanche to run his own section in the
counterespionagedivision, designated B1(c).
One of those who served with Rothschild in MI5’s subsection was
Leonard Burt, to whose memoirs the baron contributed a short pref-
ace. Rothschild’s encyclopedic knowledge of bomb disposal tech-
niques, which apparently included the task of ensuring the prime
minister’s Cuban cigars had not been tampered with, took him to Gi-
braltar and Paris, where he was billeted briefly withMalcolm Mug-
geridgeat the Rothschild mansion in the Avenue Marigny. The
acerbic journalist, also a committed Socialist, recalled this episode in
his memoirs:His disposition was a curious, uneasy mixture of arrogance and diffidence.
Somewhere between White’s Club and the Ark of the Covenant, between
the Old and the New Testament, between the Kremlin and the House of
Lords, he had lost his way, and been floundering about ever since. Embed-
ded deep down within him there was something touching and vulnerable
and perceptive; at times lovable even. But so overlaid with the bogus cer-
tainties of science, and the equally bogus respect, accorded and expected,
on account of his wealth and famous name, that it was only rarely apparent.Rothschild’s undoubted intellectual prowess made other members of
the service feel uneasy. His boast of an IQ of 184 was almost calcu-
lated to engender unpopularity, and there was considerable adverse
comment when he was decorated with the George Cross for disman-