Talk:Hannah Primrose, Countess of Rosebery

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URFA/2020 review and concerns
Hi, I reviewed this article as part of WP:URFA/2020 and I have some concerns that it is no longer meets the featured article criteria. I have outlined my concerns below:
 * There are many paragraphs that do not have an inline citation at the end. What is verifying the last sentence's information?
 * The "Politics" section is quite long. Can this be summarised and reduced?
 * The "Death and legacy" section is quite long. Can this be split and summarised?

I note that my concerns above were present in the version that passed the FAC. However, I think FA standards have risen since the article's FAC and I do not believe it would be promoted to FA status if nominated today. Is anyone interested in addressing these concerns? Pinging as they are still an active editor and the article's FAC nominator. Z1720 (talk) 18:05, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Did I nominate it? I can't say I remember. I'm interested, yes, but there's little I can do; I may have copyedited the article, but the person who actually wrote it, and sourced it, was . I have written to him that he had better come save Hanna. Bishonen &#124; tålk 18:16, 23 March 2022 (UTC).
 * I wrote it, almost every word. It is the first and, as far as I know, the only biography of this very interesting woman, who is well worth a whole pile of published biographies. Why she doesn’t already have one, I don’t know as she was far more interesting and complex than her rather irritating husband. The greatest compliment is that her still living grandson links to this article (https://roseberyestates.co.uk/dalmeny-house/the-5th-earl) from the website of his estate. If you really want to remove well researched and accurate information, then do so. I have rather lost interest in Wikipedia as a source of reliable, interesting information, as it seems overrun by a police force seeking mediocrity and uniformity. Giano  (talk) 21:03, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I have split some paras, which were overlong. I don't think summarizing the 2 sections mentioned is at all appropriate - we really don't need sub-articles on these - but some lower-level headings might be appropriate. She was the wife of a future Prime Minister (a point the lead might make rather earlier), & very involved in his career, so a detailed account is required. Johnbod (talk) 02:30, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
 * "Death & Legacy" now split up. Johnbod (talk) 17:43, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
 * it looks like you were the original nominator back in 2007 and addressed comments during the FAC, but you acknowledge then this was mostly Giano's work. I guess this shows how much the FAC process has changed since the late 2000s.
 * My intention is not to remove any well-researched prose. Instead, it is to point out that there are long sections that deter readers from reading about and discovering this great person. has done a great job putting prose under level 3 headings for the "Legacy" section, and I think the "Politics" section could also be subdivided. It would be great if a subject-matter expert such as yourself could do a readthrough of and figure out where this section can be split up underneath level three headings. The article also needs citations at the end of each paragraph, as it is currently unclear what source is verifying this information. Z1720 (talk) 03:33, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Now sub-divided the politics section too. Johnbod (talk) 04:02, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you Johnbod Giano  (talk) 17:26, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

A Town Called Hanna
I have just moved this section to the penultimate paragraph of the legacy section. I view this information with a huge wishful-thinking pinch of salt, and am very disappointed to seeing it, today, being percolated into many other related Jewish related articles. None of the references provided are cast iron. While it could conceivably be true, it’s odd that Hannah Rosebery’s descendants are unaware of this. References available from reputable online sites vary from the Hannah concerned being a niece of Baron de Hirsch, to the daughter of N M Rothschild - neither of which are this Hannah Rothschild/Primrose/Rosebery. It’s most likely, but far from certain, that Baron Edmond de Rothschild did choose the name to honour a family member; however, that narrows the field to seven possible Hannahs. It is exceedingly unlikely that he would have chosen a very distant great grand niece who not only had been dead for 30 years, but was also unpopular within the family for not only her mannerisms, but also marrying a Christian and rearing Christian children. Furthermore, she was affiliated to a branch of the family who were not Zionists. Baron Edmond had several far more likely Hannahs to choose from, including a venerated matriarchal aunt Hannah, who was the daughter of Levy Barent Cohen, wife of Nathan Mayer Rothschild and Hannah Rosebery’s grandmother. I am prepared to be proved wrong, but the evidence and references currently provided haven’t convinced me. Here are just two varying references: The Jewish Agency for Israel Baron Hirsch’s neice. daughter of N M Rothschild  Giano  (talk) 19:30, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Indeed. One wonders if he needed to have a specific Hannah in mind at all, or was covering several birds with one stone. Johnbod (talk) 13:14, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
 * In the last few hours, I've trailed through several Wikipedia pages and am very unhappy to see this doubtful fact now inserted into many related pages, as it's now likely by repetition to become an accepted fact. I've seen other spurious claims relating to Rothschilds and Zionism. While, today, many members of the family are hugely philanthropic towards Israel that has not always been the case. Especially so amongst Hannah Rosebery's generation. By the time Zionism became a real cause in the 1890s, she was already dead. It is worth quoting in full from 'Rothschild: A Story of Wealth and Power, by Derek Wilson (page 291) "When in the 1890s, Zionism was born, the Rothschilds were unanimous in rejecting it as an ugly, deformed infant which should be mercifully put down." Harsh and ugly words! But they give a flavour of Hannah Rosebery's world. With the possible exception of her very distant and remote cousin Baron Edmond de Rothschild, this was the family's stance until after 1918 and for one branch until the Holocaust. It seems the town of Pardes Hanna was officially founded in 1913; the town was also under the patronage of Baron Hirsch rather than Baron Rothschild. One site claims the Hannah Rothschild in question was Hirch's niece, but I can find no family connection between him to the Rothschilds. I also question why an Israeli town would be named after a woman who if not an anti-Zionist was certainly not pro - to be quite honest, I doubt the question or even thought ever entered her head. Furthermore, to be so named, the etiquette of the day would have required the assent of her widower, Lord Rosebery - there is no reference to this amongst his papers. If one is going to name a town after someone, one does it definitively - not by using alone one of the most common Jewish forenames. Furthermore, Lord Rosebery who had been Home Secretary and Prime Minister was not known as an ardent Zionist and could even be a little anti-semitic, especially after his wife's death in 1890. In total, there were seven Hannah Rothschilds, but I strongly suspect the Hannah of Pardes Hanna was Hannah (biblical figure) In light of the continued generosity of the Rothschild family to Israel, the financing of the Knesset building and the Supreme Court of Israel building to mention just two of many Rothschild funded projects, perhaps to a small town a Rothschild connection could be a useful appellation. As I have said, I'm happy to be proved wrong, but as yet, I'm far from convinced. A faded photograph of Hannah Rosebery hanging in a museum proves nothing.  Giano  (talk) 15:40, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

This is far from FA quality.
Perhaps the standards were different fifteen years ago, but read this through, folks: it's a long, well-written article with many citations, yes. It's also riddled with POV statements -- many unsourced -- as well as a lot of meandering to cover up the truth that there is just not a lot of fact out there about the subject, and double-checking, I've already found several statements unsupported by the cited sources. Much of the article is a coatrack for her husband's political career. I plan to give this the statutory two weeks or so before taking it to FAR, but at the very least, it needs a dramatic rewrite. I certainly question whether enough is known (as opposed to conjecture, innuendo and gossip) about Lady Rosebery to make her a genuine, viable FA candidate.   Ravenswing     02:06, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
 * ”I've already found several statements unsupported by the cited sources.” I doubt very much that’s true, as I don’t make things up - I might muddle a page number, never a fact!  However, as many may have gathered by my lack of recent edits, I’ve completely lost faith and interest in Wikipedia. The project’s content seem to be governed by each new class graduation which is tiresome and I’m done with it. Furthermore, I expect the Rothschilds garner anti-Semitic prejudices, otherwise Women in Red would have seized upon Hannah years ago - a strong woman who drove her feeble, neurotic husband to political fame ought to appeal to them. Yes, you give it a ‘dramatic rewrite’ and put Jewish Hannah back into the non notable box you feel she clearly deserves .  Giano  (talk) 19:58, 28 May 2022 (UTC)
 * What. The. Pluperfect. Hell. You really need to ratchet this back, right the hell now, assume some good faith, and not reflexively call other editors liars.  Strange though this might seem to you, there is no prerequisite that someone must be an anti-Semite or a misogynist to find some serious flaws in an article, nor that someone needs time-in-service to do so (although I started editing Wikipedia four months after you did, and have over twice the edits).   Ravenswing      00:36, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Further: if you'd like a list of statements in the article unsupported by the sources presented, just look at the article history, because I'm beginning to systematically remove them. Lucky for you I've a copy of McKinstry's book among others, huh?   Ravenswing      00:49, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
 * still planning to take this to FAR? I encourage you to do so if issues haven't been addreseed (t &#183; c)  buidhe  02:54, 28 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Yep, I think so. Giano's claims of near-perfection above notwithstanding, working just with a single one of his sources and getting less than halfway through, I've found fifteen errors so far: a basket between erroneous quoting of the sources, outright misquotes and mistakes, and downright inventions -- seriously, a citation in the article was of personal e-mail?.  While there's certainly enough written about Lady Rosebery that her notability is not in question, that is far, far too much for an article with a pretense to being FA.   Ravenswing      01:48, 29 May 2022 (UTC)


 * And there: FAR initiated.   Ravenswing     02:16, 29 May 2022 (UTC)