The official website of Sir Martin Gilbert – 20th Century British Historian and the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill

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.

Sir Martin Gilbert

Welcome to Sir Martin Gilbert's website, a celebration of his life and his work, his passion, his philosophy, his favourite haunts, his humour and his humanity.

The official biographer of Winston Churchill and a leading historian on the Twentieth Century, Sir Martin is a scholar and an historian who, through his 88 books, has shown there is such a thing as “true history”.

  • Is Historical Fiction an Oxymoron?

    Photo:  Feng Shan Ho, Consul General in Vienna, 1938, Manli Ho Collection 650 words / 3 ½ minute read Martin loved watching old war films and would get together with his friend the military historian Max Arthur, the two of them offering a running commentary with and ...

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    Feng Shan Ho
  • Churchill in Tel Aviv

    Churchill’s 1921 visit to Jerusalem

    Photo:  Churchill with Tel Aviv’s mayor Meir Dizengoff, 30 March 1921 800 words / 4 minute read At midnight on 23 March 1921, Churchill left Egypt for Palestine by overnight train.  Sir Herbert Samuel and T. E. Lawrence accompanied him.  At that time 83,000 Je...

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  • “The life of Sir Martin Gilbert and his books on the Holocaust”

    Photo:  Sir Martin reading to his students in front of the ruins of Crematorium III in Birkenau, June 1996 (from Holocaust Journey) 350 words /  1 ½ minute read The above titled article was published in The Jerusalem Post on February 12.  Unsurprisingly it piqued m...

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    MG at Birkenau