When we realised that entirely fresh volumes of official documents were being published, we resolved to write together a new version of Namier’s history. Our bible at the time was Lewis Namier’s Diplomatic Prelude, a history of the months leading up to the second world war, written from the diplomatic blue books published at the time. This gave us both a lasting interest in the history of central Europe. I first met Gilbert when we travelled through Poland together on a student trip from Oxford in the summer of 1959. Most recently, he had been a member of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war. He was as interested in geography as in history and his many historical atlases are strikingly original and have often been imitated.
The author of more than 80 history books and atlases, he often wrote on Jewish themes and was a committed Zionist, though was quietly critical of today’s Israel and the dominance of the Likud party. Sir Martin Gilbert, the distinguished historian and official biographer of Winston Churchill, has died aged 78.
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