She was the daughter of a superstar Regency tenor who vaunted her Jewish ancestry in the face of prejudice and caused eyebrows to be raised by marrying first one aristocrat then his brother.
Yet while Frances, Countess Waldegrave, saved one of Britain’s best-known houses from ruin and revived it as a centre of social and political life, her story has been overshadowed.
Her activities at Strawberry Hill, in Twickenham, famous as the Gothic Revival creation of the Whig politician Horace Walpole, are among “underexplored” Jewish connections of grand British and European houses highlighted in a new online touring route.
Frances was a daughter of John Braham, a former synagogue singer from London who was reputed to have sold pencils in the street before being talent-spotted