Hannah Rothschild’s recently released The Improbability of Love is rather wonderful. She manages to weave a fast-moving plot into fascinating study of wealth in 21st Century London and its effect on the art world. Among her cast of characters are exiled Russian oligarchs, desperately poor English noblemen, a billionaire art dealer with a Nazi past, unscrupulous art experts, and sell-out artists. Rothschild knows this milieu because she is part of it, and as such, it is remarkable that she is willing to take it down quite so thoroughly. Perhaps her friends and acquaintances failed to recognize themselves?
Archie, Tigger, Bandit and the Duchess of Roxburghe, Floors Castle
The book is also very funny, and humor does cushion a blow. In one passage Rothschild simultaneously captures the upper-class English person's affection for pets and penchant for retaining childhood nicknames:
“Your aunt Joanna has let herself go,” Barty said. “I saw her at the Devonshires’ the other night. She sat down and her bottom spread over the sofa like a ripe Brie.”
“Poor Aunty Jo,” Emeline said with feeling. “She never got over losing Topper.”
“I thought her husband was called Charles?”
“He was—Topper was her Pekinese.”
Image Credit: The English Dog at Home, Photographs by Geoffrey Shakerley.
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