Lionel Walter Rothschild
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The Right Honourable The Lord Rothschild FRS |
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| Member of Parliament for Aylesbury |
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In office 1899–1910 |
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| Preceded by | Ferdinand James von Rothschild |
| Succeeded by | Lionel Nathan de Rothschild |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Lionel Walter Rothschild 8 February 1868 London, United Kingdom |
| Died |
27 August 1937 (aged 69) Tring, United Kingdom |
| Religion | Judaism |
Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild,FRS (8 February 1868 – 27 August 1937), was a British banker, politician, zoologist and a scion of the Rothschild family.
Walter Rothschild was born in London as the eldest son and heir of Emma Louise von Rothschild and Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, an immensely-wealthy financier of the international Rothschild financial dynasty and the first Jewish peer in England.
The eldest of three children, Walter was deemed to have delicate health and was educated at home. As a young man, he traveled in Europe, attending the university at Bonn for a year before entering Magdalene College at Cambridge. In 1889, leaving Cambridge after two years, he was required to go into the family banking business to study finance.
At the age of seven, he declared that he would run a zoological museum, and as a child, he collected insects, butterflies, and other animals. Among his pets at the family home in Tring Park were kangaroos and exotic birds. As a boy, Rothschild was once dragged off his horse and assaulted by workmen while on a hunting ride near Tring, an experience that he personally attributed to antisemitism.
At 21, he reluctantly went to work at the family bank, N M Rothschild & Sons in London. He worked there from 1889 to 1908. Нe evidently lacked any interest or ability in the financial profession, but it was not until 1908 that he was finally allowed to give it up. However, his parents established a zoological museum as a compensation, and footed the bill for expeditions all over the world to seek out animals.
Rothschild was 6 ft 3 in (1.91 m) tall, suffered from a speech impediment and was very shy, but he had his photograph taken riding on a giant tortoise, and drove a carriage harnessed to six zebras to Buckingham Palace to prove that zebras could be tamed.
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