The Scrapbook was saddened to learn last week of the death, after a long illness, of Sir Martin Gilbert, the British historian. He was 78 years old. Sir Martin, whose grandparents had fled to England from czarist Russia after a pogrom, was an Oxford-educated scholar and writer of exceptional fluency and industry. Obituary tributes have made much of the fact that he produced some 80 books in his lifetime—an astonishing record, by any measure—but of course, there was more to his achievement than mere numbers.
Gilbert’s multivolume authorized biography of Sir Winston Churchill (1968-88)—begun when Churchill’s son Randolph died after completing just two volumes—is not only a detailed and comprehensive record of the great man’s life, but a wise, insightful, and graceful assessment of his career and influence. Lives of Winston Churchill will be written and published indefinitely, but Sir Martin Gilbert’s monument is not likely to be superseded.
Like many great historians, Sir Martin was actively engaged with his times as well. A committed Zionist and authority on Jewish history, he helped to establish the discipline of Holocaust studies and explored the long epic of the Jewish diaspora, in Europe and elsewhere. He wrote about British diplomacy, Soviet refuseniks, the first and second World Wars, and the history of Jerusalem. He was a broadcaster, documentarian, and familiar voice on radio and television. Toward the end of his life he served, at the request of his friend Prime Minister Gordon Brown, on the official inquiry into Britain’s role in the Iraq war.
Two minor items help to illustrate what Martin Gilbert was like. He had a lifelong fascination with geography and cartography, and all his books were brimming with lovingly rendered maps. And as a traveler he was an indefatigable writer and sender of postcards, sometimes dozens at a time. Above all, he was a gentleman of genius and decency, who wrote hard truths and explained the world he inhabited.
