LONDON — Lord Victor Rothschild, millionaire banker and a former British intelligence agent who was once briefly linked to one of Britain's most controversial spy scandals, has died, his wife said Wednesday.
Lady Rothschild said in a statement that her husband died Tuesday at age 79. She did not disclose the cause of death or other details.
Nathaniel Mayer Victor Rothschild was born into the 200-year-old family descended from German coin collectors who founded a banking dynasty.
He was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College in Cambridge as a biophysicist.
He succeeded his uncle as the fourth Baron Rothschild in 1937 and took his seat in the House of Lords as a member of the Labor Party.
At Cambridge in the 1930s he had joined an exclusive debating society known as the Apostles, which included Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt, who were later exposed as agents for the Soviet Union.