Martin Gilbert was named Winston Churchill's official biographer in 1968. He is the author of seventy-five books, among them the single-volume Churchill: A Life, his twin histories The First World War and The Second World War, the comprehensive Israel: A History, and his three-volume History of the Twentieth Century. An Honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and a Distinguished Fellow of Hillsdale College, Michigan, he was knighted in 1995 "for services to British history and international relations," and in 1999 he was awarded a Doctorate of Literature by the University of Oxford.