{Sir Martin Gilbert, the Jewish British historian and biographer of Winston Churchill, died yesterday at age 78. Gilbert, one of the most prolific historians in the world, dedicated decades of his life searching for \u201chistorical truth,\u201d in archives and personal testimony. } <\/p>\n
He was born in 1936 in London, two and half years before the outbreak of World War II. Nine months into the war, he was evacuated to Canada out of fear of a German invasion of the British Isles, and only returned to his native land when he was seven. <\/p>\n
He studied and taught at Oxford, which became his academic home, but very frequently left the ivory tower for his research. He collected historical documents and testimony \u2014 including letters, diaries, minutes of meetings, conversations and photographs \u2014 from military cemeteries and battlefields, monuments throughout Europe and archives all over the world, including in Israel. He described himself as a \u201chistorian of archives,\u201d who chose to write history from the perspective of the people. <\/p>\n
His work on the Churchill biography started in 1962, when Randolph Churchill asked Gilbert to help him with research on the biography of his father. After Randolph\u2019s death in 1968, Gilbert took over the biography project himself, and added six more volumes to the two that had already been published \u2014 along with other books, such as “Churchill and the Jews.” From 1968 to 1988 he dedicated his working life to research on Churchill. <\/p>\n
As opposed to most other historians, especially post-modernists, Gilbert believed there is a \u201chistorical truth\u201d and avoided using the word \u201cmaybe\u201d in his works. He published 88 works during his lifetime \u2014 all of which dealt with the 20th century, in particular the First and Second World Wars, the Holocaust and Israel. A number were written as \u201catlases,\u201d combining history and geography. <\/p>\n
In 1990 he was made a commander of the British Empire and knighted in 1995.<\/p>\n
Haaretz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Sir Martin Gilbert, the Jewish British historian and biographer of Winston Churchill, died yesterday at age 78. Gilbert, one of the most prolific historians in the world, dedicated decades of his life searching for \u201chistorical truth,\u201d in archives and personal testimony. } He was born in 1936 in London, two and half years before the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000056112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-18517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000056112,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18517.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18517.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18517.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18517.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18517.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18517.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000056112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18517"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=18517"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=18517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}