Bbc churchill biography gilbert

Sir Martin Gilbert, historian and biographer of Sir Winston Churchill, has died after a battle with cancer.
Martin Gilbert, who has spent 25 years researching and writing about the life of Churchill, presents the first complete television biography of Britain's.
The Churchill Biography.

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Unspeakable evils

From the start of the persecution of the Jews in Germany, Churchill took the Jewish side of supporting a boycott of German goods, writing in 1937 of 'a perfectly legitimate use of their influence throughout the world to bring pressure, economic and financial, to bear upon the governments which persecute them'. After he became Prime Minister in 1940, Churchill opposed the prevention of Jewish refugees reaching Palestine, telling the Colonial office that the government had 'to be guided by sentiments of humanity towards those fleeing from the cruellest forms of persecution'. When his son Randolph drew his attention to the imminent deportation to Mauritius of 793 illegal refugees intercepted off Palestine, he immediately instructed his officials to allow them to remain there.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 was the start of the Holocaust as we know it. Messages reaching Churchill through his intelligence services told of the murder, in groups, of thousands of Jews. He made powerful reference to these killings when he broadcast on November 14

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A&E Winston Churchill

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The 10 greatest controversies of Winston Churchill's career

In 1943, India, then still a British possession, experienced a disastrous famine in the north-eastern region of Bengal - sparked by the Japanese occupation of Burma the year before.

At least three million people are believed to have died - and Churchill's actions, or lack thereof, have been the subject of criticism.

Madhusree Mukerjee, author of Churchill's Secret War, has said that despite refusing to meet India's need for wheat, he continued to insist that it exported rice, external to fuel the war effort.

"[The War Cabinet] ordered the build-up of a stockpile of wheat for feeding European civilians after they had been liberated. So 170,000 tons of Australian wheat bypassed starving India - destined not for consumption but for storage," she said upon release of the book in 2010.

Churchill even appeared to blame the Indians for the famine, external, claiming they "breed like rabbits".

"It's one of the worst blots on his record," says Toye. "It clearly is