Welcome to Sir Martin Gilbert Online

Martin Gilbert reflects on the writing of history:

On the tomb of the nineteenth century Church historian Bishop Mandel Creighton are inscribed the words: "He tried to write true history."

Like the bishop - who was a member of my own college at Oxford - I believe that there is such a thing as "true history".

What happened in the past is unalterable and definite. To uncover it - or as much of it as possible - the historian has several tools, among them chronology, documentation, memoirs, and the vast apparatus of scholarly work in which others have delved and laboured in the same vineyard.

Sir Martin Gilbert is Winston Churchill's official biographer, and one of Britain's leading historians. His book The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy (published in the United States as The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War) is a classic work on the subject.

Martin Gilbert is the author of eighty books in total, among them the single-volume Churchill: A Life, his twin histories First World War and Second World War, a comprehensive History of Israel, and his three-volume work A History of the Twentieth Century (also published in a single, condensed volume). He is an Honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and a Distinguished Fellow of Hillsdale College, Michigan.

In my Churchill researches between 1968 and 1988 I read every page of an estimated fifteen tons weight of documentation. The material available in archives - including, particularly for Churchill, at Churchill College, Cambridge, and in the vast Public Record Office in London - is formidable and revealing - revealing of every facet of policymaking, of success and failure, of friendship and opposition, of cause and effect, of mood and motive.

In my own published work, I have avoided the word "perhaps". It is for the historian either to say what happened, or to say that he cannot discover it. To say, "Perhaps it was like this" is to mask a failure to get to the bottom of a problem: and failure in historical research is no crime. It is one of the hazards of the profession.

I have stressed in my work the contemporary voice, and contemporary point of view and action, wherever it can be found: in letters, diaries, documents, transcripts of meetings and conversations - even in photographs.

Dealing with a period when many eye-witnesses are alive, I have also been eager to present the voice of such eye-witnesses: some through conversations, others through correspondence. I began this in my Churchill work in 1968, and in my Holocaust work in 1978.

In every instance where I use such eye-witness testimony, I make it clear that it is the voice of an
eye-witness, and that it is a recollection. Such voices bring atmosphere, perspective, point of view - and even facts (which the historian must check, but which are often facts not otherwise easy to come by).

The passage of time is not, in itself, a barrier to the uncovering of true history through the memories of individuals.

Not only do I believe that it is possible to tell a true and straight and clear tale, I also welcome any
corrections and amendments and additions to what I have published.

My work has continually been enhanced by those who have written to me on matters of detail - to point out errors, or to correct lack of clarity, or to add new factual dimensions. Hopefully, this website will encourage such contact. No author can live in an ivory tower, free from the help and comments - and hopefully even the enthusiasm - of readers.

I welcome any contribution, on tiny matters or large. In my dictionary, the word "pedant" is a paean of praise, and "nit-picking" is a worthy art.

FOR A COMPLETE LIST OF MARTIN GILBERT'S BOOKS, CLICK HERE.