ROTHSCHILD, LORD• 465tling a crate of Spanish onions that contained an incendiary device.
Over a field telephone line, Rothschild gave a remote running com-
mentary on how he was tackling the mechanism and his remarks
were transcribed by his secretary, and future wife, Tessa Mayor.
Somehow the resulting typescript of this episode reached the com-
mander of the local military district, who was so impressed by the
MI5 officer’s bravery that he recommended him for a gallantry
award. As Rothschild was technically a ‘‘civil assistant at the War
Office,’’ he was ineligible for a military decoration so he received the
highest medal for civilian bravery, the George Cross. When this was
gazetted, it confounded some of his critics like Sir Harry D’Avigor
Goldsmidt, the Jewish MP who, ignorant of the peer’s employment
by MI5, had once demanded to know why an able-bodied man such
as Rothschild was not in uniform like his contemporaries, serving in
the armed forces.
Rothschild’s decoration was a blatant breach of the long-standing
convention that members of the secret services would never be sin-
gled out for recognition, and it drew some adverse comment from his
colleagues. The suspicion that Rothschild had retained a copy of his
official report on the onion crate incident and ensured that it received
a wide but unauthorized circulation was compounded when in 1977
he published a collection of essays that included a short account of
his handling of the bomb disposal episode.
After the war Rothschild returned to academic life but retained
close links with the Security Service. He remained on good terms
withGuy Liddell, MI5’s postwar deputy director-general, and as-
sistedDick Whiteto investigate his friendKim Philby. Rothschild
was much embarrassed by his old connections toGuy Burgessand
Anthony Blunt, both of whom he had allowed to live in his West
End apartment during the war. In his memoirs,Random Variables,
he described the news that Blunt had been exposed as a traitor as a
devastating blow.
Rothschild died in March 1990, not long after he was embroiled in
another controversy, this time overPeter Wright. To his profound
discomfort, Wright had disclosed that Chapman Pincher’s notorious
expose of MI5,Their Trade Is Treachery, had been written based on
information Wright had provided, and that Wright had been intro-
duced to Pincher by Rothschild. Perhaps even more awkward was