Part musical odyssey, part dazzling love story The Baroness traces Nica's extraordinary, thrilling journey - from England's stately homes to the battlefields of Africa, passing under the shadow of the Holocaust, and finally, to the creative ferment of New York's 1950s jazz scene.
Hannah Rothschild is a freelance director and writer. Her feature documentaries, including the Jazz Baroness, have been shown on the BBC and HBO. She has written newspapers and magazines including Vanity Fair, Vogue, The Independent, The Spectator, Bazaar and House and Gardens. Vice President of the Hay Literary Festival, Trustee of the National Gallery and Waddesdon Manor, this is her first biography.
Startling . . . Hannah Rothschild tells this story with care, balancing narrative tension with a desire to lay out all the facts so readers can make up their own minds . . . Wholly gripping - Observer - Rachel CookeThe story that Hannah Rothschild tells in her bright, clear prose is a mixture of things - nearly a biography of Nica, nearly a biography of Thelonious Monk, nearly a sketch of the 1950s New York jazz scene. At one level it's a version of The Hare with Amber Eyes . . . [Nica's] story, with all its tall tales and theatrical paraphernalia, is full of interest and warmth . . . She was ballsy and kind. There's something to be drawn out here - something given a particular emotional torque by the author's own consciousness of her place in this family - about belonging and escape: about what you can achieve, what you're doomed to endure, and all that jazz - Spectator - Sam LeithRiveting, touching and insightful - Daily TelegraphA well-researched biography. It is one third a history of the Rothschild family, one third a portrait of Nica, and one third a biography of Monk. Nica comes across as a remarkable woman, strong, feisty and rebellious - Sunday TimesRichly textured, elegantly told and often as surprising as its subject, Hannah Rothschild's biography of her great-aunt is a moving tribute to a fascinating and original woman - Country Life
This charming biography of the eccentric and romantically adventurous Baroness Panonica de Koenigswarter (1913-1988) is written by her great-niece. Perhaps Rothschild could be accused of obsession, having previously produced both a radio program and a documentary feature film about the baroness, but the reader is immediately engaged. Rothschild vividly describes the world of wealth and privilege in which Panonica (known as Nica) was raised in the early decades of the 20th century, a lonely youngest daughter of a mentally unstable and later suicidal father and a Hungarian beauty of a mother. Rothschild wants to understand how and why Nica (who became a baroness when she married Baron Jules de Koenigswarter) turned her back on her family and her husband and fled deep into the New York jazz scene of the late 1940s. A benefactor to countless musicians, she became the subject of tabloid gossip when Charlie Parker died in her suite at the elite Stamford Hotel. Much of the vitality of her New York life hinges on her long relationship with Thelonious Monk, who wrote songs for her and for whom she once took the fall in a drug bust. Nica is an irresistible combination of British eccentricity and Rothschild sophistication. Readers will enjoy this intimate story of a lifetime of rule breaking, told with remarkable detail, tenderness, and true empathy. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, the Wylie Agency. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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