He has been married since 1989 to Aviva Burnstock, the head of the Department of Art Conservation & Technology at the Courtauld Institute in London.
[3] Through his paternal grandmother Audrey Haldinstein, he is a great-great-grandson of Herbert Leon, who owned Bletchley Park until he sold it to the British government in 1938.
[4] Cecil Sebag-Montefiore, the author's great-grandfather, committed suicide after serving with the Royal Engineers on the western Front of World War I.
[5] Montefiore's father, Stephen Eric Sebag-Montefiore, was descended from a line of wealthy Sephardic Jews who were diplomats and bankers all over Europe.
Her parents fled the Russian Empire at the turn of the 20th century; they bought tickets for New York City, but were cheated, being instead dropped off at Cork, Ireland.