Nicholas Hugh Sebag-Montefiore (born 5 March 1955) is a British writer. He trained as a barrister before becoming a journalist and then a non-fiction writer.
He has published two books on the history of the Second World War, of which the first was Enigma: The Battle for the Code in 2000 and concerned the breaking of the German Enigma machine code at Bletchley Park.[1] In 2006, Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man came out.
He was among the signatories of the 2007 open letter to the BBC against the closure of the Timewatch documentary series, published in The Guardian.[2]
In 2016, Somme: Into the Breach appeared in time for the 100th anniversary of the Somme Offensive during the First World War.
He has been married since 1989 to Aviva Burnstock, the head of the Department of Art Conservation & Technology at the Courtauld Institute in London. His brother Simon Sebag Montefiore is also a writer, besides being an historian. His cousin Denzil was a platoon commander at Dunkirk.[3]
Through his paternal grandmother Audrey Haldinstein, he is a great-great-grandson of Herbert Leon, who owned Bletchley Park until he sold it to the British government in 1938.[4]
Cecil Sebag-Montefiore, the author's great-grandfather, committed suicide after serving with the Royal Engineers on the western Front of World War I.[5]
Montefiore's father, Stephen Eric Sebag-Montefiore, was descended from a line of wealthy Sephardic Jews who were diplomats and bankers all over Europe. At the start of the 19th century, his great-great uncle, Sir Moses Montefiore, became a banking partner of N M Rothschild & Sons.[6] His mother, Phyllis April Jaffé, comes from a Lithuanian Jewish family of poor scholars. Her parents fled the Russian Empire at the turn of the 20th century; they bought tickets for New York City, but were cheated, being instead dropped off at Cork, Ireland. During the Limerick Pogrom of 1904 they left Ireland and moved to Newcastle, England. The father of his namesake, Bishop of Birmingham Hugh Montefiore, was the great-great-nephew of Sir Moses.[7]
The author's own cousin, Denzil Sebag-Montefiore, may have been one of the few Jewish platoon commanders on those gruesome beaches...
The author's own great-grandfather, Cecil Sebag-Montefiore, we learn, killed himself after serving with the Royal Engineers on the western front.
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