Gordon Brown leads tributes to ‘unforgettable friend’, historian Sir Martin Gilbert
The Jewish Chronicle
At a memorial on Tuesday night in front of close to 600 guests including Holocaust survivors, members of the Churchill family and ambassadors, the former Prime Minister revealed that Sir Martin was to be made a Lord before his health declined in 2012.
Mr Brown also told the audience at Western Marble Arch Synagogue in central London that the next book written by Sir Martin – who was Winston Churchill’s official biographer – was to be about Labour’s most recent spell in Downing Street.
“Martin had agreed to make his next book a chronicle of our period in government,” he said, and prompting laughter from the crowd, added: “and what he would’ve made of us all, I guess we’ll never know.”
“When the [former] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and I exchanged presents, it’s a reflection of Martin’s pre-eminence and our shared admiration of him that without either of us knowing it, I had chosen to give Olmert a copy of Martin’s The Righteous, and Olmert had chosen to give me a copy of Martin’s The Story of Israel.”
Mr Brown concluded his speech by paying heartfelt tribute to a man who he said “sailed the river of life brilliantly”.
“Our hearts will still ache at his loss but he leaves behind imperishable works that will never be lost, and he lives on in the impact he has on all of us, on the millions who he never met but who meet him in the pages that he wrote.”
He continued: “And every one of this great, large group of friends who come today to honour Martin from all over the world will not only never forget him, but as long as we live we will never cease to be inspired by the light and the learning he gave to us, to our country, and to the world.”
Rabbi Lord Sacks also commended Sir Martin in a moving speech, saying: “He was such a very special person. We loved him, we admired him – we miss him.”
The former Chief Rabbi recalled an event before the Holocaust Exhibition opened at the Imperial War Museum in June 2000, when survivors came to a dinner organised for them to see the display before it opened.
“I dreaded that moment,” he confessed. “But I needn’t have worried. They were exuberant. It was as if they were at a wedding. They proceeded to talk through my speech, through Martin’s speech.
“It was just like being in shul.”
He said it was at that moment that he realised how Sir Martin, “in telling the story of the Holocaust and many other stories, lifted the burden from so many broken hearts.
“He was the person who gave voice to the voiceless.”
Speaking in soft, emotive tones, Lord Sacks told guests that Sir Martin had “showed more powerfully than anyone I ever met that history is an especially Jewish vocation”.
“He understood that to be a Jew is to make memory a religious duty. Martin had this phrase written on his heart – Moses tells the future generations: ‘Remember the days of old.’ That was the religious duty he had.
“We don’t make monuments for those who have died; their words are their memorial. Martin gave so many people their memorial.”
In a short speech, Lady Gilbert described her late husband as “a man of passion and compassion, who influenced the world as much as he wrote its history.”
Rabbi Nicky Liss, the minister at Highgate United Synagogue, said that though he only knew Sir Martin for a few years, “the wisdom he taught me gave me a completely new perspective on how to view the world. He taught me the importance, power and relevance of the individual in history.
“A blessing to the whole world, to the Jewish race and to Great Britain, Martin was also a jewel in the crown of our community.”
Plan to elevate Sir Martin Gilbert to Lords before death, revealed by Gordon Brown
Jewish News
Gordon Brown has revealed plans were in place to elevate historian Sir Martin Gilbert to the House of Lords before his untimely death, as he led tributes to the revered historian at a memorial service in London.
Large numbers of the Churchill family, diplomats, Jewish community leaders and former colleagues of Sir Martin’s on the Chilcot Inquiry into the causes of the Iraq War were among 600 guests at Western Marble Arch Synagogue on Tuesday night.
The service paid tribute to the many facets of Sir Martin’s life: as the master biographer of Sir Winston Churchill, as a supremely gifted academic scholar, as a lucid chronicler of Holocaust stories, as the author of a record 88 books, and above all as a family man.
The former prime minister and his wife Sarah were close friends of Sir Martin, described by his widow, Esther, as “a man of passion and compassion”. He spoke in heartfelt terms about the aurthor, who had, he said, “helped me again and again,” and was “the most prolific scholar of our time”. He had helped Mr Brown to write the speech he made to the Knesset in 2008, and it was no coincidence, said the politician, that both he and the then Israeli premier Ehud Olmert had chosen a Martin Gilbert book to present to each other.
His next book, said Brown, was due to have been “a chronicle of our period in government”, and pondered on what such a book might have contained.
Like others paying tribute – former Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks, said, “He gave a voice to the voiceless.” Historian Sir Richard Evans, who had been Sir Martin’s last undergraduate student at Oxford, and Winston Churchill’s great-grandson, Randolph Churchill – Mr Brown spoke of Sir Martin’s meticulous attention to detail, his love of maps and his insistence on going to archive sources.
Holocaust survivors in the congregation recalled his signature work on re-telling their stories, while it fell to Randolph Churchill to brandish one of Sir Martin’s characteristic postcards, sent to friends and family far and wide on a regular basis.
The singer Richard Winch provided a reminder of Sir Martin’s pride in his identity with three songs which he had previously performed at Sir Martin’s 70th birthday celebrations – London Pride, There’ll Always be an England, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s For He’s An Englishman.
Rabbi Nicky Liss, minister of Highgate Synagogue, was a close family friend and had helped organise his burial in Israel. He chaired the proceedings and said that plans were in place to make a permanent memorial at the synagogue which is being rebuilt. Western Marble Arch’s Rabbi Lionel Rosenfeld sang “El Maale Rachamim” to close the service.
Gilbert and Brown Immemorial

Barry Singer writes about the Arts, Literature & Winston Churchill. He is the proprietor of Chartwell Booksellers in NYC.