Hugh sebag montefiore biography examples
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Sebag-Montefiore Montefiore
MONTEFIORE, SEBAG-MONTEFIORE, English family originating from Leghorn, Italy. (See Chart: Montefiore Family 1, 2, and 3). The first to come to England were the brothers MOSES VITA (1712–1789), who set up successfully as an importer of Italian straw hats, and JOSEPH (b. 1723). The former had 17 children who intermarried with the Anglo-Jewish families. His grandsons Joseph Barrow *Montefiore (1803–1893) and JACOB MONTEFIORE (1801–1895) were prominent in early Australian history; two other sons were Joshua *Montefiore and JOSEPH ELIAS (1759–1804) who married Rachel Mocatta and was the father of Sir Moses *Montefiore. Sir Moses' brother and business partner, ABRAHAM (1788–1824), married as his second wife Henrietta Rothschild. Their two sons were JOSEPH MAYER (1816–1880) and NATHANIEL (1819–1883), the father of Claude Goldsmid *Montefiore. Joseph Mayer succeeded Sir Moses as president of the Board of Deputies in 1874, after having been the first vice p
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Somme: Into the Breach
The book by Mr Sebag-Montefiore is well-structured and the edition I read (paperback) was updated from the hardback. The research and sources are rich and clearly linked to the text and accounts. Maps - for a paperback copy - are, although black and white, well provided being clear and various.
Somme: Into the Breach is however principally a infantrymans' account; overwhelmingly so. It is right and proper the book keeps the infantry central to events and the experiences but to this reader key parts are omitted or discussed fleetingly.
There is coverage of high command (Army, Corps, Division and Brigade) and the decisions made and taken. Absent is any real coverage, commentary and analysis of the political background from both Government, War Cabinet and indeed inter-allied; especially so after the first week of the Somme. Also absent, and for any post-1914 battle
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What first attracted you to the period or periods you work in?
I write mainly about Russia, the Caucasus and the mittpunkt East. My mother’s family were refugees fleeing the pogroms of Romanov Russia, especially Lithuania, Poland and Odessa, and so I was always fascinated by those worlds and that led me to Catherine the Great and Potemkin, my first book. As a war correspondent in the 1990s I covered Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia during the Karabakh war; Ossetia and Abkhazia; Chechnya and Grozny; and the fighting in Moscow in 1993, so that made me even more fascinated in the period. All vägar led to Stalin and I started to write about him. For Jerusalem, I had visited the city often and been fascinated bygd its history, so inom always planned to write my biography of the city and the mittpunkt East.
Can you tell us a little more about how you research? Has the process changed over the years?
My first three big history books were based on archival research so inom simply went