Elie Rothschild obituary

 Elie de Rothschild was the last of the triumvirate who ran the Rothschild bank, Rothschild Frères, along with his cousin Guy and his brother, Alain. Guy de Rothschild was the financial leader, and in Paris they joked that he was at his desk for 11 out of 12 months, thus enabling Alain and Elie to spend but one there.

There was much for Elie to enjoy as a fifth-generation Rothschild. The family had become prominent socially without losing its Jewish identity, and its members had inter-married to preserve their considerable fortune, owning mansions in Paris, castles, studs, racing stables, yachts and France's most prestigious vineyard, Château-Lafite.

Born in 1917, Elie was the son of Baron Robert de Rothschild, a partner of Rothschild Frères, and his wife, Nelly Beer, a cultured society lady of some beauty, who came from a German- Jewish banking family. The young Elie was raised at Chantilly and the family home at 23 avenue de Marigny in Paris, with his brother, Alain, and his two sisters, Diane (later Muhlstein and then Benvenuti) and Cécile (unmarried, a well-known collector of post-Impressionists, who later allowed herself to be enslaved to the whims of Greta Garbo, during the Swedish star's long years of bored travelling at the expense of rich friends and the exasperation of most involved parties).

The children learned English before French. It was a cultured childhood, Elie being exposed to composers such as the Proustian Reynaldo Hahn, and François Poulenc, and hearing many notable sopranos sing. As a young man, Elie was primarily a sportsman.

The Second World War was not an easy time for Rothschilds, though the French branch succeeded in hiding their assets, and rebuilding their business after the war. Elie himself joined the cavalry regiment of the Anciens Cuirassiers with zest but was captured by the Germans close to the German border. First he was taken to Nienberg, near Hamburg, but when his escape plan was discovered he was transferred, first to Colditz and later to Lübeck, one of the toughest prisoner-of-war camps. At Lübeck he found his brother, Alain. There was real fear that both would be exterminated, but fortunately they were granted the status of captured officers and both survived.

While in Colditz, Elie de Rothschild had written to his childhood sweetheart, Liliane Fould-Springer, and asked her to marry him. Despite the imprecations of her parents of the danger of taking on the Rothschild name while the Nazis were in control of Paris, she married Elie by proxy. It proved a resilient marriage, Elie and Liliane sharing the avenue de Marigny mansion with his brother Alain and Alain's wife, Mary. Liliane was small and stocky, no great beauty, but a woman of great culture. One of her friends said of her: "She looks like a cook, talks like a queen, lives like an empress, and thinks like a philosopher".

Elie and Liliane du Rothschild collected voraciously, she being the intellectual and artistic of the pair. They owned paintings by Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Dubuffet and Picasso, and Liliane was forever collecting new treasures. Once she looked at an exquisite recent acquisition, and with good humour explained: "J'ai voulu l'acheter à n'importe quel prix . . . et à ce prix-là je l'ai eu!' ("I wanted to buy it at any price, and at that price I got it.")

There was much for her to tolerate from her husband, of whom his friends stated good-humouredly that a ruder man could scarcely ever have existed, but in his rudeness he was commendably consistent - rude to his wife, rude to and about his friends. When a younger French aristocrat announced his engagement to an older and richer English peeress, he berated him: "Why buy the cow, when you can get the milk for nothing?"

Rothschild was a noted philanderer, justifying this because of the prime years he had lost while in prison during the war. His most famous affair was with Pamela Churchill, the estranged wife of Randolph, who was by then making her not inconsiderable way as the last of the celebrated courtesans in history.

The affair began in 1954 and came about because Liliane was depressed following the death of one of her sisters and her stepfather. She retreated from the world for a year and while she was out of Paris, Elie met Pam, lately the mistress of Gianni Agnelli, who had failed to marry her. Rothschild justified the affair in a matter-of-fact way: "She was sweet, charming and pretty. I wanted to go to bed with her and I did." The affair was a fairly open secret in Paris society, but when Liliane found out about it, she was heartbroken and worried. Nevertheless she could still rise above it. When the Duke of Windsor asked her: "Which Rothschild is the lover of Pamela Churchill?' she replied: "My husband, Sir". This remark undermined Pamela as much as any other retributive strikes and presently the affair receded.

However, many years later, the appointment of Pamela (by then Mrs Averill Harriman) by President Bill Clinton to be US ambassador in Paris presented Liliane with a dilemma, much monitored in Parisian circles - whether or not she would accept an invitation to the American Embassy. She resisted.

After the war, Elie de Rothschild worked hard at Rothschild Frères, at the time when Guy was restoring the fortunes of the bank and making a considerable success of it. He also worked at Château-Lafite-Rothschild, one of the finest vineyards in the world. This vineyard he owned jointly with Alain, Guy and their English cousin, Jimmy. The business prospered, though there was a fall-out with Philippe de Rothschild at Mouton-Rothschild, when Elie opposed his cousin's inclusion in premier cru status.

In the early 1950s, Elie and Liliane de Rothschild moved to 11 rue Masseran, where one of the problems of restoration was that this 18th-century mansion was not linked to the Paris sewerage system. Later they moved to an equally grand residence at 10 rue de Courcelles, heavily adorned with dark red silk, where they entertained in the traditional Rothschild style with exquisite food and wine.

Elie de Rothschild continued to have mistresses, including the antique dealer Ariane Dandois, with whom he had a daughter, Ondine, born in 1979. After his wife's death in 2003, Rothschild dropped her, perhaps for fear of matrimony. Even when in his eighties, informed accounts of his love-life raised eyebrows at Parisian lunch parties.

Recently, in greatly failing health, he had moved to London, though was twice flown to Paris to vote in the recent presidential elections. He happened to die while at his hunting lodge in the Austrian Alps, though his hunting days were long over.