Hannah Rothschild spills beans on Corfu

The Rothschild family are a notoriously secretive lot, especially, as has become all too evident in the last week or so, about the goings on at their sumptuous villa on the island of Corfu. So it is surprising that one of their number, Nat Rothschild's elder sister, Hannah (pictured), has decided to spill the beans about the place in a new book called Corfu the Garden Isle.

In the book, which has been compiled by a neighbouring villa owner, Count Spiro Flamburiari, she begins by revealing how the villa came into the family's hands. "[It was] bought as a token of love by my father Jacob for his mother Barbara while she was living in Athens with her husband, the distinguished painter and Greek National Treasure, Nicolas Hadjikyriakos-Ghika," she writes.

Of her and her siblings' relations with the locals, she says: "My sisters and brother and I have grown up with a generation of today's successful Corfiots. Angelo, my brother's closest childhood playmate, runs the best diving centre on the island. In our local village, Aghios Stephanos, the Gallini taverna now has six rivals."

And the villa itself appears to have been the setting for a number of daring escapades. Hannah, a London-based film producer, recalls: "Until the early Nineties, a huge searchlight placed above Aghios Stephanos searched the night water looking for escaping Albanians. Ships and pleasure craft straying into Albanian waters were apparently shot at. Following a drunken lunch my godfather Tremayne Reynell took up a dare to collect an Albanian pebble in a small sailing dinghy. We all watched in terror as the small craft tacked back across the straits waiting for a clatter of bullets to rip through the tiny sail and her captain. He made it back and with the pebble."