Sad news today. The great biographer of Winston Churchill, Martin Gilbert, has died:
“ROME — Sir Martin Gilbert, a widely respected British-Jewish historian who strongly defended the wartime record of Venerable Pope Pius XII, died Tuesday at the age of 78. He had been suffering from cancer for some time.
“Sir Martin Gilbert was in inspiration to all of us who seek the truth,” said Gary Krupp, the Jewish founder of the Pave the Way Foundation, an organization that has sought to uncover the truth about Pius XII and his efforts to save Jews in World War II.
The official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill, Gilbert wrote the book The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust, which documented the action of the Church and Pope Pius XII in rescuing Jews from Nazi persecution.
He also wrote numerous books on the Holocaust, the First and Second World Wars and Jewish history. In the last years of his life, he became best known in Britain as a member of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War. The panel, which began in 2009, is investigating how U.K. forces came to participate in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to the BBC.”
Go here to read the rest. I have many of his books in my library. His scholarship was always impeccable, his prose limpid and his outlook humane. As the video at the beginning of this post demonstrates, he defended Pope Pius XII from the lies told against him. He was a good and honest servant of Clio, the muse of History, and I shall miss him.
Yes, another great and good man gone. sigh
May he rest in peace, a GOOD & faithful servant of God, man & truth.
May he rest in peace. He was a giant in the field of history, and may his work long endure.