Cracow, February 2010 1.30 minute read/295 words Martin’s talk at the Jagiellonian went well; it can be a surprise for an audience to learn a new aspect of their history. In thanking Martin, his host remarked also how refreshing it was that Martin, unlike many of their non-Polish lecturers, knew…

This July marks ten years since then Prime Minister Gordon Brown set up the Iraq Inquiry, headed by Sir John Chilcot and included Sir Lawrence Freedman, Sir Roderic Lyne, Baroness Prashar, and Sir Martin. The commission, “appointed to consider the UK’s policy on Iraq from 2001 to 2009”, was given…

This September marks the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War, a war that saw the deaths of tens of millions of both military and civilian populations, and a sea of refugees both before and after the conflict. In those pre-war years in Germany when the Nazi…

Photo: Sir Martin, describing the preparations for the Normandy Landings, May 2003. Photo © Bernie Pucker, with thanks to Liz Burgess. Patrick Kidd, in The Times on April 29, writes of the tragedy of the Slapton Sands rehearsal for the D-Day landings: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/slapton-sands-rehearsal-that-was-deadlier-than-d-day-flzh7g66x Sir Martin, in D-Day, gives the background to…

Photo: Martin and Max, consulting the map of their journey, June 2003 Max Arthur, OBE  25 February 1939 – 2 May 2019 It began at a cafe in Hampstead though by the time I got to know them, their friendship was already close. Two historians of the twentieth century, focussing…

Photo: Memorial to the Jews of Dzialoszyce murdered “by the German Genociders” Michael Brown, writing a piece in WND entitled “Why Russian Jews Dreaded Easter Weekend” has several inaccuracies that call out for clarification. His premise is that Jews in Russia were subjected to anti-Jewish violence that had been instigated…

Photo: Martin with Elizabeth Nel, 2006, in London The Elizabeth Nel Correspondence The latest edition of Finest Hour, “The Journal of Winston Churchill and his Times” (Number 183) contains an article by Cita Stelzer entitled “Working with Winston: The Unsung Women Behind Britain’s Greatest Statesman”. Cita Stelzer writes about Churchill’s…

Photo: Some of the hundreds of box files of Sir Martin’s archive In March, Hillsdale College in Michigan announced they had acquired Sir Martin’s library and archive. As the above excerpt shows, Martin spoke with anyone who had known Churchill, worked with him, worked for him, even those who worked…

On April 9, Israelis will go to the polls in what could be a momentous election. As this map shows,the numbers and needs of Arabs who are citizens of Israel, though a minority, must be taken into consideration in a democratic state. The Arab-Israeli Minority, as at 2010 Read: Arab-Israel…

Photo: Martin speaking at the launch of his book The Holocaust, 2003, Skopje, Macedonia. Lubcho Lapé is to his right. In memory of the 75th anniversary of the German occupation of Hungary, the Hungarian periodical Szombat is publishing the “Hungary” chapter in The Righteous, Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust, which…

Photo: Leaders in the strike, including John Hopla who with Will John formed the Cambrian joint-strike committee. WalesOnLine. The recent mailbag included inquiries from two journalists who wrote to ask Martin to comment on a remark by the Shadow Chancellor. John McDonnell claimed that Churchill, while Home Secretary in 1910,…

On January 20th, a burial took place at a Jewish cemetery in London that was attended by members of the government, clergy, and 1200 Jews of varying degrees of religiosity. Who was this individual whose death had brought together so many, and from such a wide spectrum of society? No…

Photo: Rabbi Nicky Liss, Chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue, at the gravesite. Courtesy HMDT Tens of thousands of events across the UK were supported by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, from speakers to exhibitions, from memorial programmes to projects, in schools, civic centres, churches and care homes. …

January 21st marks the 4th anniversary of Martin’s death on the Hebrew calendar. It is also the Israeli holiday of Tu B’Shvat, or the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shvat, the holiday of planting trees. It is the only Israeli holiday that is not biblical, historical or political,…

December’s mailbag included an email query from Prodos Marinakis from Melbourne, Australia, who writes to ask about an article in The Independent by Jenn Selby in which she writes of Sir Martin, “Like much of Britain in the Thirties and Forties, however, he adds that Churchill ‘shared the low-level casual…

PHOTO: Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev (on the right) speaks to Lavi Melman (on the left) and Roy Van-Gelder (centre), both of whom are related to Jewish Brigade soldiers who were killed in North Italy in 1945, at the Westminster Field of Remembrance, 8 November 2018. In response to a piece…

PHOTO : Martin with the Nemon bust of Churchill, photo courtesy Lady Young. It is now nearly four years since Martin died, and six and a half since he published a word. But I am continually amazed at how his work and his reputation for being, in Dennis Prager’s words,…

Photo: The Jewish fallen in the British Forces with their list of regiments, represented by their Stars of David, next to the fallen who fought with the Jewish Brigade in the Second World War. On Thursday, November 8, will be the official opening of the Westminster Abbey Field of Remembrance,…

Photo: The Baden Baden Synagogue burns on Kristallnacht  I remember the look on Martin’s face when he told me. It was pure astonishment on his part, and he had been the detective, unaware of what he was to uncover. Amanda Foreman (who had known Martin since her childhood) and Lisa Jardine…