September 11, 2015

Finest Hour 165, Autumn 2014

Page 10

By THE RT HON GORDON BROWN MP


Sir Martin Gilbert was a pupil at Highgate School from 1945 to 1955, an enjoyable interlude for him. It came between the war years when he was sent away to Canada, and the period when perhaps he was less happy also, doing military service in the cold climate of my home country, Scotland. Highgate gave him confidence and a love of learning, a keenness and an enthusiasm for history. That was owed to great teachers who taught him the power of history, not only to influence but also to affect the continuing progress and advancement of nations and continents.

Israel is a country that for centuries never had a land to call its own. In 1948 thanks in part to Churchill and most of all to the courage and the sacrifice of its people, the Israeli state was created. And now we hope it will have a lasting peace with the Palestinian people.

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The many diplomats gathered here today underline the impact Martin has had across the international, political, academic and intellectual community. Gladstone was the last prime minister to visit this school, and in the mid-19th century. It was said that after you met Gladstone you went away thinking he was the wisest person in the world; but after you met his great rival Disraeli you went away thinking you were the wisest person in the world. I would like you to think, as you leave having met Martin Gilbert, that you are the wisest people for being here today.

Martin’s eighty-eight books comprise a record of authorship that is unsurpassed in this country. His first book, The Appeasers, with Richard Gott, who is here today, began a skein including famous atlases and memoirs, influential books on the two World Wars, even a children’s book about Israel that my own children have had the chance to read after a visit to Israel with his daughter Natalie. His scholarship on Churchill and the 20th century will stand unrivalled.

It was said that Picasso, asked to show a television audience how he worked, created a doodle which was shown to them. “There you have it,” said the interviewer. “Only ninety seconds and you have a work of art that’s probably worth millions.” Picasso replied: “No, it took seventy-four years. All my life is in the work that I’m now producing.”

That is also true of Sir Martin Gilbert’s books, almost two a year, the brilliant product of long years of work that began at Highgate School and run to the present day. It is indeed scholarship, as Martin has said: he wanted to write real history, true history—to find out what really happened. It’s not his way to make grand judgements without the scholarship and detail to back them up. It is his way to provide such detail that his case is almost unanswerable.

When  I was pursuing my Ph.D., I was told that a successful thesis might change a line in a history textbook. I thought this was no great ambition to have. My thesis changed no lines…but Martin has continually given us new perspectives that are in all the standard accounts of the age, from Gallipoli through to the rise of Churchill, his premiership in the Second World War through his last years as prime minister. Thanks to Martin’s precise nitpicking, we know what Churchill was about. And Martin has said that “nitpicking” is not a bad word, because it is necessary for the work he had to do, to clarify through exquisite detail what really happened.

That leads to a point about his achievement that I think we must remember. Martin is a great internationalist, who wants to see the world coming together. He would be proud that today is the anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel. I went there to address the Knesset, bringing Martin to help me with my speech, surveying its long struggle for survival and lasting peace.

In one of the rooms of his house I noticed he has assembled all the documents he had brought together about the terrible events of the Holocaust. Martin was in no doubt about the evil people could do to others. That is why he supported the Holocaust Educational Trust, which sends young people from schools in Britain to Auschwitz, to learn and understand, so that such things will never happen again. Yet, despite the darkness that he found in our history, Martin has remained optimistic about the future. A citizen of the world, he still looks forward to a time when people can be brought together.

It is also a personal privilege for me to take part in this tribute. I know Martin helped Lady Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair, and Harold Wilson before them. But he also helped me a great deal with his insights into history. He was available to us at every point, always hoping for the best outcomes. He is a genuine humanitarian, whose writing of history taught him that we could always do better if we learn history’s lessons.

This year marks the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, about which, as you know, Martin has written extensively. Some of you may know Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken.” You have choices, Frost tried to say. Your decisions change your life and the lives of those around you. “Don’t read too much into it,” Frost said, “don’t think of it as so significant.” But his poet friend Edward Thomas, inspired by the message of that poem, volunteered to enlist. He went to France, where he died, and Frost could never again say that “The Road Not Travelled” had no importance.

Martin Gilbert took a road less travelled. His decision to become a historian changed the way we look not only at Britain but our relationships with the world. His work changed the lives of many by interpreting the past, the present and the future.

We all know the phrase, “the good and the great.” Some people are great, but not necessarily good; others are good, but you cannot say they are great. Sir Martin Gilbert is a great man and a good man, and I am pleased and proud to share with so many of his friends in this tremendous commemoration of his life and work.


Mr. Brown was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010 and served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007. He has been a Member of Parliament since 1983. This article is excerpted from his remarks at Highgate School, London, at the opening of the Sir Martin Gilbert Library on 6 May 2014 (FH 163: 6).

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