Lady Rothschild interview: ‘I'm proud to have been a Page 3 girl'

Telegraph

3 hours ago

Loretta Rothschild is contemplating the term 'trophy wife'.
As a former Page 3 model who married Nat Rothschild, heir to the centuries-old European banking dynasty, she's grown used to the tabloid sobriquet. 'I've been described as worse things,' she laughs. 'But on Page 3 – honestly, I really want to make this clear: I'm so proud to have been a Page 3 girl and I will always celebrate that achievement.'
This is the first time Lady Rothschild, to use her official title, has ever given a proper, sit-down interview. Until this point, the billionaire couple, who married in the Swiss ski resort of Klosters in 2016, had not even made it public that they have a son – whose name and age she has requested I withhold.
Why such secrecy, when her only child will one day become the 6th Baron Rothschild, inheriting a vast wealth that has made the family one of the most famous in the world? 'There are downsides,' the 34-year-old admits. To being a Rothschild? 'No, to being in the press,' she caveats. 'I've had photographers turn up outside my sister's home and at my mum's… I've always said I won't talk about my son until he is 18 years old and then he can decide for himself.'
Which goes some way to explaining why Rothschild boasts a Burke's Peerage entry – but not a Wikipedia one. So far, any articles that have been written about her have tended to be of the Essex girl/arm candy variety. One praised her 'fantastic figure, great boobs, small waist, good bum, and long, chestnut hair', while another described her as 'looking gorgeous in black undies, stockings and suspenders'.
That rather tawdry narrative is set to change, with the publication of Finding Grace, Rothschild's page-turning first novel, which is already on Goodreads' list of the hottest debuts of 2025.
Described as a 'gripping and emotional love story exploring grief, motherhood and an explosive secret', the book chronicles the lives of Tom and Honor – a husband and wife torn apart by a shocking event. The Tell Me Lies author Carola Lovering has said it 'feels like a movie… with characters and scenes that explode off the page' – and plaudits have been flowing in from bestselling authors including Plum Sykes, Julia Whelan and Imogen Edward-Jones. The American writer, Jodi Picoult, who has sold more than 40 million books, enthused: 'Loretta Rothschild's debut novel has one of the best first chapter cliffhangers ever…and then it just keeps getting better.'
As we meet at the offices of Rothschild's publicist in central London, I find the budding novelist dressed casually in a pair of blue Levi's and black ribbed Cos jumper – with her navy Habsburg military-style blazer hanging over a nearby chair.
Although she was born in Essex, and brought up by her mother Sue, an East Ender who encouraged Loretta and her older sister Olivia into child modelling, there isn't a false eyelash or fake fingernail in sight.
Instead, the well-spoken Rothschild, who as far as I can tell is wearing no make-up at all, exudes the kind of wholesome, natural beauty that Page 3 girls were famous for before The Sun discontinued the topless photography in 2015, after more than 44 years.
'There were not a lot of us,' she recalls, her piercing blue eyes staring straight into mine. 'And we were all natural. The images weren't airbrushed or touched up or anything like that. It was a very comfortable environment. I mean, at the time, I didn't think of it as a career or anything like that. It was just great to be able to earn my own money and support myself. But I was probably never very good at it, because my head was somewhere else. You know, I was always away with the fairies, whatever I was doing.'
Alison Webster, the paper's official Page 3 photographer, remembers her rather differently, once describing 'Elle', as she was known to fans back then, as 'a bright girl who was sure of herself and always in control'. She adds: 'And she was ambitious. We'd sit with a glass of wine after a day's shoot and she'd tell me she wanted to make something more of herself. And I always felt that she would.'
After appearing in The Sun and modelling under her real name Loretta Basey, Rothschild went on to date the comedian Steve Coogan, who she met during a cover shoot for the now defunct lads' mag, Loaded. He was guest-editing in the guise of his alter-ego Alan Partridge and, in one photograph, was snapped cupping her breasts in his hands.
The couple lived together at his home near Lewes, East Sussex, before breaking up in 2014. The actor's 2015 autobiography Easily Distracted thanks 'Loretta for making me laugh with her gentle mockery, and for her love'. The pair remain friends. 'I mean, I adore Steve, I really do,' insists Rothschild. 'We had a great relationship. You know, nearly five years of my life.'
But it was Eton-educated Rothschild, 53, who ultimately stole her heart. Not that it was love at first sight – far from it, in fact.
Denouncing as 'nonsense' reports that the couple met while Loretta was working for a private jet company, she explains: 'We'd been friends for quite a long time. I wish there was some romantic story but my husband's pretty straightforward. I think we were on a dog walk and he said: 'I want you to be my girlfriend.' I can't quite remember but I think I replied: 'What, no dinner?' or something like that. We were ambling along and I was very much sort of covered in mud.
'I didn't become his girlfriend in that moment. We were friends, and we continued to be friends, even after the 'I want you to be my girlfriend'. He was very nervous all the time around me – very shy. And it took me a few years to fall in love with him.
'When it was just us, he could be quite quiet, but he came to life with his friends, when there were other people around. When I really started to fancy him was when he started to be very funny. Nat is so funny, to the point where sometimes I can't breathe.'
I ask if she was worried about the 19-year age gap – or, more importantly, the weight of the Rothschild name.
Describing the former member of Oxford University's notorious Bullingdon Club as 'the least kind of society person I know', she adds: 'I can't even think of him in that way. He's not a snob. Nat's Nat. He comes into your life, and that's it, he's in. That's the blessing. That's why I probably never felt like I was in a certain world because Nat is someone I deeply admire for the way he walks through the world. He's very, very true to himself. There's never a moment where a façade is up. He is totally authentic, 100 per cent of the time. And that's very attractive.'
After marrying at an intimate ceremony in the Swiss Alps nine years ago, the pair then held a second wedding reception at Stowell Park, Nat's parents' sprawling estate near Pewsey, Wiltshire. But the groom did not invite his father Jacob to the wedding and they remained estranged until his death, aged 87, last year. The former investment banker and hereditary peer would tell friends their strained relationship was similar to that of the King and Prince Harry. Nat's mother, Serena, a thoroughbred-racehorse owner, did not attend either, although the pair remained close until her death in 2019, aged 83.
Reluctant to comment on the family feud, Rothschild insists she 'wasn't ever worried' about what she was marrying into – or indeed how she might be treated as an 'outsider'. 'I just had no idea. I probably made some terrible mistakes, seemingly to some people, and would ask questions I probably shouldn't have asked, but Nat and I just got on so well that we were in our own world. I was never intimidated by anything. I think after Page 3, if any negativity came my way, I just thought, well, that's your view, but I can't control what other people think of me. I'm never going to please everyone. So if I can please my mum or Nat or the people that answer the phone every day and really know me, then that feels nice to me.'
The couple live quite a nomadic lifestyle – with a superyacht and homes in London, Wiltshire, Los Angeles and Klosters. They are currently spending most of their time at another home, in Italy. Estimates of Nat's wealth range between £1 billion and £40 billion following his father's death. Yet Loretta insists that she remains rooted 'in the principles that my mum really nailed into me', adding: 'There's two things in life I cannot stand. One of them is snobbery about anything, and the other is intentional cruelty towards others. Cruelty and snobbery are just non-starters for me.'
Like Nat, she is estranged from her father – Phillip, an accountant and a former treasurer of UKIP and the Brexit party. The couple appear to be much closer to her family than the wider Rothschild clan. She explains: 'You know, our family chat (group) consists of me, Nat, my mum and my immediate family. He's very much in the Essex chat group. At recent Christmases I've enjoyed watching just how much Nat loves my mum. The whole thing is so small. I don't honestly think about 'the family'. Do I feel like someone's wife? No, Nat sort of has to get on with us!'
And if she ever gets any ideas above her station, she's brought back down to earth by her sister. 'I would sometimes call Liv and say: 'You don't understand what's just happened to me' and she'd be like: 'Yeah, can you babysit tonight?'
'When I react, I react as an Essex girl. I mean, I wish I didn't sometimes but that is fundamentally who I am. I've worked really hard to do what I have – whether it's Page 3 or my book. When I look at that – I achieved that and I want to carry on achieving things.'
Despite being 'appalling at school', and later being diagnosed with dyslexia, she developed a passion for literature. 'School was tough,' she admits of her all-girls, private secondary education, saying she preferred the mixed state primary school she attended when she was younger. She adds: 'The teachers would all say: 'She's in her own world', which was absolutely correct.
'I left school, went to college for a bit and did a year at Manchester Metropolitan but, on reflection, I should never have gone to university. I was always walking around with characters in my head, making up stories – I didn't realise that other people didn't do that.'
When the Covid lockdown happened, Rothschild began 'devouring everything I could find about writing novels'. She cites Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, William Boyd's Any Human Heart, Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty and Max Porter's Grief is the Thing with Feathers as inspirations, alongside writers including Saki and Somerset Maugham.
'I started to learn why some novels work and why some don't. And then Honor [the book's main character] kind of came into my head. She was this very vocal voice and I couldn't do anything without her voicing an opinion. It was like she was suddenly there.'
The book, she admits, is essentially a series of love stories. 'It's a love story, but it's also about paternal love, platonic love, unexpected love, past loves, and how they are intertwined.' She's a romantic, then? 'I think I am. I think that falling in love, that freefall of infatuation is so quick and so rarely experienced that it's the most dangerous. At that moment, you're at your most vulnerable.'
I wonder if she worried about the book being branded 'chick lit' when actually the 'first chapter cliffhanger' Picoult referenced makes it more in the vein of Gone Girl or The Girl on a Train.
'I like the fact that I've written a love story. I've written something that is considered a romance. So chick lit, for me… if I am in any way in that kind of window or associated with those authors, I would be thrilled. Those books are so fantastic – they're popular and have a fan base that will queue around the block for them.'
She adds, 'It's strange that that is something that isn't celebrated in the right way, or dismissed when those authors are writing about really important subjects. It's just snobbery.'
She did every online writing masterclass she could find during lockdown and then attended a creative writing course in LA for a year. 'I'm quite methodical. I've got a lot of ideas but I needed some structure. I needed to find a style that suited me.'
Finding a publishing deal was, she admits, 'terrifying'. Acknowledging that most people will assume she only got the book published because of her husband, she says: 'I never really said to people, I'm going to do this thing. I said, hey, I've done this thing – it already exists, here it is. Because I remember, back in my 20s, mentioning to one person that I want to write – and they sort of gave me this face. So I thought, 'I'm not going to do that.' Don't tell people what you're planning to do – just tell them what you've done.
'I had quite a lot of naivety about it in the sense that I was so excited I finished this thing. But my first thought was: will it even get read? In the few weeks before we sent it out, I reread the first few chapters and thought, this is terrible, why am I doing this?'
Just 72 hours after the draft was sent out to UK and US publishers, St Martin's Press, based in New York, replied. 'I remember it exactly,' smiles Rothschild. 'I opened my email and they came back and said, 'We want it, and we want the next one as well', so it ended up being a two-book deal. But in England, there were a lot of rejections. It certainly didn't happen because of my surname. That doesn't really happen, unless you're a Tolstoy! Actually writing a book and getting it published is bloody hard.'
Admitting she did 'drive my husband a bit mad' with the whole process, she says: 'He was extremely supportive, to be fair, bringing me endless cups of tea. He was always up for it.'
Rothschild would get up at the crack of dawn and write before anyone else had woken up. 'I felt like that time was so precious, when the whole house was quiet. I'd get three hours of writing in.' There is now rarely a day that goes by when she doesn't write something, and she is already halfway through her second book.
Naturally, her mother Sue remains her biggest fan. 'My mum is so proud of every breath I take. Before she'd even read anything, I was already one of the Brontë sisters to her.'
Reader, she may have married him – but when it comes to this Page 3 girl turned published author – it's probably best not to judge the book by its cover.