Photo: In Ishmael’s House makes a cameo appearance in Small Apartments, directed by Jonas Äkerlund, 2012, near James Marsden, playing Bernard 390 words / 2 minute read Literally one of those if-you-blink-you-missed-it moments, Martin made a cameo appearance. Well, not really Martin, but rather one of his productions. Spotted in a…
Photo: Martin in Yalta, February 1990, while filming the BBC Churchill series 700 words / 3 ½ minute read On February 4, near Brandschied, American forces breached the outer defences of the Siegfried Line. That day, in the Crimean resort town of Yalta, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met to discuss the…
Photo: Krzysztof Hejmanowski, left, the building inspector for the construction company, with Bartlomiej Gwozdz, left, the archaeologist, and some of the artefacts unearthed in Lodz. Photo by AP photographer Rafal Niedzielski 560 words / 3 minute read In January came the news that in December, during a building renovation in the…
Photo: Esther with Debra Brunner, Founder and CEO of The Together Plan, and Paul Demby, former Chair of the Trustees, 28 February 2019, photo ©Debra Brunner 450 words / 2 minute read After years of being “Patron” of The Together Plan I will be adding “real content” in the form of…
Photo: The rebuilt synagogue and community centre in the Ukrainian city of Zhitomir. 520 words / 2 ½ minute read Within five weeks of the German invasion of Russia on June 22, the number of Jews killed exceeded the total number killed in the previous eight years of Nazi rule. The…
Photo: Winston Churchill addressing Congress, 26 December 1941; Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressing Congress, 21 December 2022 475 words / 2 ½ minute read Joint Session of Congress I feel greatly honoured that you should have invited me to enter the United States Senate Chamber and address the representatives of both branches of…
Photo: Ayatollah Khomeini on the Iran 2000 Rial banknote (in November 2022, worth £.04 or $.047) 635 words / 3 minute read 1953: Not only Communism, but Islam, was offering an alternative political system to parliamentary democracy. On November 2 the Constituent Assembly in Pakistan declared the country a republic and…
Photo: Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis with museum founder Sheikh Ahmed Al Mansoori at the Crossroads of Civilisation Museum’s Holocaust exhibit in Dubai, November 2022. 360 words / 2 minute read You might have missed it. But tucked away between the struggle of the brave women of Iran to be allowed to choose…
Photo: Churchill with Roosevelt give a joint press conference in Washington, 23 December 1941, photo Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library 350 words / 1 ½ minute read Germany declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941, four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Churchill, concerned that the…
Photo: Left to right, Rivka Liebeskind (Dolek’s wife), Dolek Liebeskind, Miriam Liebeskind (Dolek’s sister). Rivka survived. Photo from Ghetto Fighters’ House, Israel. 530 words / 2 ½ minute read “We are fighting for three lines in the history books.” Adolf (Dolek) Liebeskind, Cracow, 20 November 1942 On December 22, a month…
Photo: Route of Anglo-American aid to the Soviet Union to keep them in the Second World War, from Sir Martin’s Routledge Atlas of the Second World War 700 words / 3 ½ minute read The war was about to take a dramatic turn. On 22 June 1941 Hitler ordered the invasion…
Photo: The Western Front, November 11, photo by United States Signal Corps, from First World War 460 words / 2 minute read On the morning of 9 November 1918, the German armistice negotiators reached the Forest of Compiègne. The German military delegate, Major-General von Winterfeldt, was the son of the man…
Photo: The Queen and her Queue, 16 September 2022, Westminster Hall, Houses of Parliament 725 words / 3 ½ minute read “Are my Jewish subjects happy”? When the late Queen Elizabeth wanted to know about the history of Jews in Britain, she turned to the historian, Sir Martin Gilbert. At an…
Photo: Karl Huhle’s photo of Hitler descending the stairway at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden to meet the former Prime Minister Lloyd George in September 1936; the interpreter Paul-Otto Schmidt is in the centre, lifting his hat, and Joachim von Ribbentrop at the left. 800 words / 4 minute read “I am…
Photo: Barbara Winton with her father, Sir Nicholas Winton, and her book. 430 words / 2 minute read “Do you want to meet Nicholas Winton?” Not an offer people get every day, even an offer made to Martin Gilbert’s groupie and wife. It was 2005, Martin was writing his book on…
Photo: The cover of the first edition of Anne Frank’s diary, The Secret Annexe, published in Amsterdam in 1947. Many editions, translations, adaptations followed. 650 words / 3 minute read Anne Frank’s story has gone through many representations. My favourite is this one: The stage is set as a dwelling that has…
Photo: Part of one of the 32 pages of photos of those killed on 27 August 1942, or 14 Elul 5702 on the Hebrew calendar, corresponding to 10 September 2022, the 80th Yahrzeit, or anniversary of the destruction of Sarny’s Jewish community. 520 words / 2 ½ minute read If a…
Photo: Lenin, still presiding over the Finland Railway Station, St Petersburg, 2007 775 words / 3 ½ minute read On August 5, in a moment of much needed relaxation, Gorbachev flew to the Crimea (to the very Simferopol in which the Crimean Tartars had demanded sovereignty less than two months earlier)…
Photo: The Boys, new edition, coming August 4th 750 words / 3 ½ minute read Fewer than 100,000 Jews survived the death camps, slave labour camps and death marches of Hitler’s Reich. This book is about 732 of those survivors; most of them boys, about eighty of them girls. What these…
Photo: Randolph and Catherine Churchill, on board the Queen Mary off Long Beach, California, 26 May 2016 Those in the Churchill world were saddened to hear of the passing of Catherine Churchill, Randolph’s wife, companion and helpmate. I really only got to know Randolph after Martin became ill, and saw Catherine…