Sir Martin Gilbert (1936-2015) was a leading British historian and the author of more than eighty books. Specializing in 20th century history, he was the official biographer of Winston Churchill and wrote a best-selling eight-volume biography of the war leader’s life.
Born in London in 1936, Martin Gilbert was evacuated to Canada with his family at the beginning of World War II as part of the British government’s efforts to protect children from the brutal bombings of the Luftwaffe. He was made a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, in 1962. He is the author of several definitive historical works examining the Holocaust, the First and Second World Wars, and the history of the 20th century.
In 1990, Gilbert was designated a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and was awarded a Knighthood in 1995. Oxford University awarded him a Doctorate in 1999. Gilbert was a sought-after speaker on Churchill, Jewish history, and the history of the 20th century, and traveled frequently to lecture at colleges, universities, and organizations around the world.
Written by master historian and authorized Churchill biographer Martin Gilbert, this masterful single-volume work weaves together the detailed research from the author’s eight-volume biography of the elder statesman, and features new information unavailable at the time of the original work’s publication. Spanning Churchill’s youth, education and early military career, his journalistic work, and the arc of his political leadership, Churchill: A Life details the great man’s indelible contribution to Britain’s foreign policy and internal social reform.
Offering eyewitness accounts and interviews with Churchill’s contemporaries, including friends, family members, and career adversaries, this book provides a revealing picture of the personal life, character, ambitions, and drives of one of the world’s most influential and remarkable leaders.
This volume takes up the story of "Churchill’s War" with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and carries it on to the triumph of V–E Day, May 8, 1945, the end of the war in Europe.Within a week of Pearl Harbor, Hitler and Mussolini had declared war on the United States. Thus Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin were now leaders of the great alliance that held the assurance of ultimate victory. But in 1942, the first year of the new alliance, the war went badly on every front, and Churchill faced serious criticism at home.In this volume, Martin Gilbert charts Churchill’s tortuous course through the storms of Anglo-American and Anglo-Soviet suspicion and rivalry and between the clashing priorities and ambitions of other forces embattled against the common enemy: between General de Gaulle and his compatriots in France and the French Empire; between Tito and other Yugoslav leaders; between the Greek Communists and monarchists; between the Polish government exiled in London and the Soviet-controlled "Lublin" Poles.Amid all these cares and dangers Churchill had to find the course of prudence, of British national interest, and, above all, of the earliest possible victory over Nazism. In doing so he was guided by the most secret sources of British Intelligence: the daily interception of the messages of the German High Command. These pages reveal, as never before, the links between this secret information and the resulting moves and successes achieved by the Allies.
A work 40 years in the making, Never Again: A History of the Holocaust, is Sir Martin Gilbert’s illustrated survey of the pre- and post-War history of the Jewish people in Europe.Masterfully covering such topics as pre-War Jewish life, the Warsaw Ghetto revolt, and the reflections of Holocaust survivors, Gilbert interweaves firsthand accounts with unforgettable photographs and documents, coming together to form a three-dimensional portrait of the lives of the Jewish people during one of Europe’s darkest times.
