Few figures in twentieth-century British finance carried a name as storied as Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, yet colleagues and grant recipients often described his charitable work as the truer measure of the man. He led the international bank N M Rothschild & Sons for nearly three decades and advised Queen Elizabeth II on her private financial affairs, though a parallel record of giving ran through his entire adult life. Evelyn de Rothschild approached generosity as a serious occupation, applying to grantmaking the same discipline he brought to the City of London. His death in November 2022, at the age of 91, drew tributes that lingered less on balance sheets and far more on the causes he chose to champion. Those causes ranged from children's hospitals and university lecture halls to endangered elephants and retired racehorses, a spread that reveals a giver guided by personal conviction rather than fashion.
A Foundation Rooted in Family Memory
The clearest expression of that commitment remains the ERANDA Rothschild Foundation, which he founded in 1967 and chaired for the rest of his life. The name forms an acronym for Evelyn, Renée and Anne, himself and his two sisters, drawn from a phrase their father used in letters written while the children were evacuated to the United States during the Second World War. That personal origin shaped an institution that today reviews more than a thousand applications each year and distributes several million pounds annually toward medical research, education, and the arts. According to the foundation he established, his guiding conviction held that charitable success should be judged by its effect on society rather than by wealth alone. The result is a grantmaking body that combines the reach of a major trust with the intimacy of a family enterprise.
Charity Treated as a Discipline
Sir Evelyn’s conviction hardened into a working method. The foundation distills his outlook into a single maxim, noting that its founder insisted "Charity is a business" and demanded the same professionalism and attention to detail in philanthropy that he expected in commerce. Observers who watched him at close range saw the principle in action. A detailed appreciation published by The Art Newspaper recalled him at the 2005 opening of a new children's hospital as approachable and fluent in every detail of the building's design and medical equipment, concluding that his giving carried a personal commitment worthy of a family tradition stretching back more than two centuries. That blend of warmth and precision defined how Sir Evelyn de Rothschild selected and stewarded the projects he supported. He preferred to understand a cause thoroughly before backing it, then to remain engaged long after the initial cheque had cleared.
Children's Health at the Heart of His Giving
Medicine and children's welfare occupied a central place in his philanthropy, and no cause illustrated it better than the Evelina London Children's Hospital. The hospital carries the name of an ancestor, Evelina de Rothschild, whose husband founded the original institution in 1869 in her memory after her death in childbirth. More than a century later, Evelyn de Rothschild served as president of the appeal that funded the modern hospital building, which opened in 2005 and remains one of the country's leading centres for paediatric care. His foundation sustained that relationship long afterward, backing specialist cardiac imaging for unborn children and, in 2020, launching a scholarship programme for nurses and midwives. The medical portfolio reached well beyond a single hospital, supporting research into Alzheimer's disease and dementia, including a clinical trial of a repurposed drug at Imperial College London and molecular research conducted at the Mayo Clinic. Each grant reflected a belief that private wealth ought to accelerate discoveries with broad public benefit.
Investing in the Next Generation
Education formed a second pillar, with a marked preference for young people at the outset of their careers. The foundation committed half a million pounds to King's College London in 2015 to endow the Sir Evelyn de Rothschild Scholarship, funding twenty-five master's students in war studies across five years. A comparable instinct guided his work with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which created a junior fellowship for early-career analysts and later remembered him as a brilliant and public-spirited figure whose humanity would be deeply missed. His educational giving also reached the University of Cambridge, the Royal Academy of Arts, Imperial College London, and the London School of Economics, where a tribute from the university that named him a governor emeritus described "a committed and generous philanthropist" whose association with the school spanned half a century. The pattern was consistent: money directed toward scholarships, fellowships, and training that removed financial barriers for capable students.
Patronage Across the Arts
Alongside science and scholarship, the arts drew his sustained attention. With his wife, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a collector in his own right, Evelyn de Rothschild extended personal enthusiasm into institutional support, endowing the ERANDA Professorship of Drawing at the Royal Academy of Arts and backing the Royal College of Art, the Photographers' Gallery, and regional venues that widened access for disadvantaged children. He served as a trustee of the Shakespeare Globe Trust and sat on the council of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. His arts philanthropy favoured teaching and craft, channelling resources toward the training of emerging singers, writers, and visual artists rather than toward acquisitions or prestige-building projects. That emphasis mirrored a wider habit in his giving, which repeatedly sought to open doors for talented people who lacked the means to walk through them on their own. The through-line, again, was opportunity rather than ornament.
A Lasting Devotion to Animals and Conservation
A lifelong affection for animals shaped some of his most distinctive commitments. He helped establish the conservation charity Elephant Family in 2002 alongside the travel writer Mark Shand, serving as a founding patron of an organisation that has since financed more than 170 conservation projects and raised over ten million pounds for endangered Asian elephants. His passion for horses ran just as deep. A breeder and owner whose runner Crystal Ocean triumphed at Royal Ascot in 2019, he had earlier chaired United Racecourses, and his foundation funded the redevelopment of the historic Rothschild Yard at the National Horseracing Museum, now home to a charity that re-homes retired thoroughbreds for second careers. Grants to the Brooke Hospital for Animals, the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, Fauna & Flora International and the establishment of the London Centre for Animal Management at Capel Manor College rounded out a portfolio that treated animal welfare and conservation as matters of real moral weight rather than genteel pastimes.
Bridging Faiths and Communities
His generosity reached across religious and social divides. Invited in 1986 to join HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Hassan of Jordan to form the Interfaith Foundation, bringing together Jewish, Christian, and Muslim voices, he maintained a lasting interest in dialogue and mutual understanding throughout his life. He held the role of honorary life president at Norwood, a leading Jewish charity supporting children and families, and directed foundation resources toward humanitarian relief through organisations such as Médecins Sans Frontières and the Felix Project. When the coronavirus pandemic strained public services, his foundation supported frontline food and hygiene initiatives that reached communities under acute pressure. That readiness to fund both grand institutions and modest grassroots efforts underscored a conviction that effective giving should meet people wherever the need proved greatest, without regard to prestige or publicity.
A Legacy Carried Forward
The breadth of his philanthropy resists easy summary, spanning hospitals and horse charities, laboratories and lecture halls, galleries and grasslands. What united these efforts was a temperament that regarded giving as an obligation to be discharged with skill rather than sentiment alone. Measured by the institutions he strengthened and the people his grants reached, the record of Evelyn de Rothschild describes a life in which financial success and public purpose were never held apart. His foundation continues its work, a standing reminder that a name long associated with banking became, in his hands, equally a byword for deliberate and far-reaching generosity.
