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: 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: 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: “Kasztner at the trial in Israel in 1953 in which a judge condemned him for selling his soul to the devil.” 885 words/4 ½ minute read Was Rudolf Kasztner a traitor to the Jewish people, who saved a few friends while allowing more than 400,000 Jews to be deported…

Photo:  The Styr River, Lutsk, just near the synagogue (built in 1626), August 2011 An excerpt from The Righteous 950 words / 5 minute read 1943, in the Lutsk region of Western Ukraine, David Prital tried to find sanctuary from the German extermination campaign of the Jews, their willing collaborators and those…

Photo:  Soviet War Memorial, 1941-1945, Rivne, Ukraine, August 2011 (figures looking to the west) 800 words / 4 minute read On April 1, in Berlin, Hitler moved his headquarters from the Chancellery building to a bunker system behind the Chancellery, and deep below it.  That same day, in Moscow, Stalin asked…

Photo:  “Averell Harriman with Churchill at a naval dockyard establishment in Plymouth, 2 May 1941, shortly after a severe German air raid (hence the steel helmet worn by the dockyard worker).” 685 words – 3 ½ minute read “These two gentleman were apparently longing for Germany to commit some overt…

Photo: Martin at his desk, March 2009, from the film The Rescuers 800 words / 4 minute read From my first days as Churchill’s biographer in 1968 I began to receive letters from people who wanted to tap my imagined expertise.  Sometimes I get as many as a dozen such letters…

Photo: Churchill in the 1890s, from Churchill, A Life When asked what aspects of Churchill’s life needed more study, Martin would answer – Churchill’s humanitarian and domestic policies.  So on this, the 7th anniversary of Martin’s death, here is some of what he wrote in that vein: 1000 words/5 minute read Areas…

The list of countries presented by Eichmann to the Wannsee Conference, with the number of Jews whom it was intended to be deported to their deaths. When genocide became mechanised 460 words / 2 minute read On 20 January 1942 thirteen senior Nazi and German officials met at a secluded…

Photo: President Roosevelt addressing Congress to ask that a state of war be declared between the United States and Japan, 8 December 1941. 820 words / 4 minute read On the morning of December 6 – the day on which Hitler was forced to accept that Moscow was not about to…

Photo: Sir Martin interviewing the late Yogi Mayer, a friend and mentor to many of The Boys as they acclimated to life in Britain after the war. Used by permission from the ’45 Aid Society Martin’s message as President ’45 Aid Society Journal, Number 30, 2006 275 words / 2 minute read It…

Photo: Churchill and Alexander, 24 August 1944, from In Search of Churchill 500 words/ 2 ½ minute read The list of Churchill’s reform measures is impressive. The Tory Democrat who became an active Liberal and then a Conservative again (at the age of fifty-six) could look with pride at the legislation…

Photo: Gordon Brown, Sir Martin, Rabbi Sacks, 11 June 2011, Hendon Synagogue; Sir Martin holding the pages with his questions. Photo by Sandra Meyer, with thanks to Rabbi Mordechai Ginsbury. 575 words / 3 min read On 15 June 2011, at Hendon Synagogue, Sir Martin moderated a conversation between The…

Photo: Hunger in Russia, 1920, from Sir Martin’s Twentieth Century, credited to Novosti, Moscow. The 1932-33 state-imposed famine in Ukraine became known as the Holodomor, “death inflicted by starvation”. 1250 words / 6 minute read In Bavaria, Hitler was building up a small National Socialist (Nazi) Workers’ Party. Denunciation of the…

Photo: Summer 1941; battle-weary German troops rest at the side of the tank 1050 words/5 minute read On the night of July1, a train made up of twenty-two goods wagons and two passenger cars left Leningrad for the east; on board, under the vigilant eye of the art scholar Vladimir Levinson-Lessing,…

Photo: Egyptian Prime Minister Anwar Sadat, centre, Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan to his right, Prime Minister Menachem Begin, standing, Jerusalem, 22 November 1977 925 words / 5 minute read In the immediate aftermath of the Six Day War, a debate began inside Israel that was to continue:  how to rule,…

Photo: Czeslaw Mordowicz  & Arnost Rosin 815 words/4 minute read Following on from the successful escape from Auschwitz of Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler in April 1944 …    On May 27 a further escape took place from Auschwitz itself. The escapees were a young Polish Jew, Czeslaw Morodowicz, and…