Blatt: Sir Martin in the news    

The new First World War Atlas

Photo: Martin “in the field” describing the events that happened there. 285 words / 2 minute read It was November, damp, foggy, grey seeping in to every corner.  I followed Martin along a straight path cut between green fields which stretched off into the fog.  No idea where we are

The new First World War Atlas Copy

Photo: Martin “in the field” describing the events that happened there. 285 words / 2 minute read It was November, damp, foggy, grey seeping in to every corner.  I followed Martin along a straight path cut between green fields which stretched off into the fog.  No idea where we are

Nechama Tec 15 May 1931 – 3 August 2023

500 words / 2 ½ minute read Photo: With Nechama Tec, Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York, October 2005. In her 1982 memoir, Dry Tears, the Story of a Lost Childhood, Nechama Tec describes antisemitism’s lasting appeal and how unconnected hatreds can be toward the hated.  She was a child

Sir Ben Helfgott: 22 November 1929 – 16 June 2023

Photo: Sir Ben Helfgott at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics officially representing Britain, unofficially representing the Jewish people who had experienced its near-total European destruction the decade before. 650 words / 3 minute read Sir Ben Helfgott didn’t just lift weights, he moved mountains.  He represented Great Britain in the 1956 and

In the mailbag … on Churchill and the Jews

Photo: Winston Churchill (left) with his literary agent, Hungarian-born Jew, Emery Reves, Le Bourget airport, Paris, 1938. 300 words/ 1 ½ minute read From an email sent to Randolph Churchill from Gerry Grunsfeld, 5 June 2023, which Randolph very kindly sent on to me: Mr Churchill. I have just finished reading

The Farhud Baghdad, 1 June 1941

Photo:  The Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Al-Husaini and Hitler, the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 28 November 1941 560 words / 3 minute read … the British forces allowed the defeated Iraqi troops to return to their barracks without surrendering their weapons.  Stung by their humiliating defeat, and already fuelled with

“God save the King”

Photo: Former Prime Ministers along with members of the Privy Council at the Accession Council ceremony, 10 September 2022.  Photo AP: Kirsty O’Connor/Pool 725 words / 3 ½ minute read When Martin was asked to become a member of the Iraq Inquiry in 2009, in order to have the security level

When children were “exterminated”

Photo: Martin’s map “Children under four deported to Auschwitz, 17 August 1942”, Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust 585 words / 2 ½ minute read Updated editions of three of Martin’s atlases will be making their appearances in the months ahead.  (Watch this space.)  I am at the moment indexing his Holocaust

“The story behind the photo”

Photo: Published in Never Again.  Left to right, Ruth Adamecz, Inge Adamecz (now Hamilton), Hanna Singer at Liverpool Street Station, 7 July 1939. 750 words / 3 ½ minute read Martin’s name on the cover of one of his books does not indicate that he only had his hand in the text. 

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 over the characters in