“Kristallnacht taught several lessons. It taught those who were the source of prejudice that a whole people can be demonised; that a whole nation can be turned totally and obscenely against a decent, hard-working, creative, loyal and integral part of its own society. This point was made on 19 August…
Extracts from Sir Martin’s unpublished diary Coming to Israel on 4 October 1973 to research Churchill’s 1921 visit there, Sir Martin was caught up in the conflict as a volunteer, and keen to record history as it happened: 5.30 am. Give a lift to an Englishman trying to get to…
Churchill for today, Teaching the Next Generation: Finest Hour 73, Winter 1991-92. “Why study Churchill?” I am often asked. “Surely he has nothing to say to us today?” Yet in my own work, as I open file after file of Churchill’s archive, from his entry into Government in 1905 to…
From The Book of Regrets Compiled by Juliet Solomon as a fundraiser for the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery JR Books Ltd 2007 Having been fortunate in my life as a historian, writing the books I wanted to write and lecturing about my work to audiences worldwide, I have no regrets…
FT Magazine 29/30 July 2006 J.R.R. Tolkien and the Somme were inextricably linked. I learned this forty-four years ago, shortly after I was elected to my first university appointment, at Merton College, Oxford. I was twenty-six years old. In those days there was a strict seating order at college dinners.…
The impact of the Vrba-Wetzler Report of June 1944 and Raoul Wallenberg’s mission to Budapest, July 1944. As told to and quoted by Robin Vrba, Jewish Heritage Museum, New York, 6 May 2012 Introductory talk to Holocaust educators. The direct link between Rudi’s Report and Wallenberg was not through Sweden, but…
Published in Churchillians By-The-Bay. Quarterly E-Newsletter, Second Quarter, 2009. Volume 1, Number 2 – Became Glow-worm No one had more power – on paper at least – than Winston Churchill. On 10 May 1940, having become Prime Minister, he appointed himself Minister of Defence. He made up his government from all three…
Sir Martin writes: On 25 and 26 July 1939, five weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War – and while Churchill was still in opposition to the government of the day, in his tenth year in the political wilderness – senior Polish Intelligence officers in Warsaw handed over…
The Times, 27 January 2005 “Could Britain have done more to stop the horrors of Auschwitz?” Sir Martin writes: From the summer of 1942 until the spring of 1944 more than a million Jews were deported to Auschwitz, where they were either murdered upon arrival, or used as slave labourers.…