Letter: Martin Gilbert, an inspirational teacher of modern history

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/09/sir-martin-gilbert-obituary-letter

Version 0 of 1.

Martin Gilbert was an inspirational teacher of modern history whose boyish enthusiasm chimed with the eager expectation of school students fresh to Oxford. He showed us how the evidence of “ordinary” people should be used to set events in context.

This gives his many books their special quality but also points to an answer for an unresolved dilemma of journalism: how to reconcile the excitable world of headlines and breaking events with the more mundane experience of those living through them. Giving voice to the latter holds the promise of calmer decision-making in public life. He combined ebullience with painstaking attention to detail. Small wonder that when a marathon session of that interminable board game Diplomacy was staged by our tutorial group, it ended in the small hours with Gilbert the undisputed winner.