Simon Schama
Simon Schama
Simon Michael Schama, CBEis an English historian specializing in art history, Dutch history, and French history. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University, New York. He first came to popular public attention with his history of the French Revolution titled Citizens, published in 1989. In the United Kingdom, he is perhaps best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC television documentary series A History of Britain broadcast between 2000 and 2002...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth13 February 1945
critics early faith naive optimism politics reinvented skeptical war
In the early nineteenth century, with Enlightenment optimism soured by years of war and revolution, critics were skeptical of America's naive faith that it had reinvented politics.
kings military war
Almost everywhere else in Europe, the more military the state, the stronger the king - except in Britain. Here it was parliament, not the monarchy, who signed the cheques. The longer the war went on, the stronger parliament became, as the purse on which it sat grew bigger and bigger.
war father fighting
From the days of the Founding Fathers, right to this (2008) election, how and where America fights to defend its freedom, has been the ultimate question in its politics. The one that triggers rage and sorrow; the one that asks is the price of blood too dear? Or, if it is to stay true to its convictions, does America have no coice but to put its lives on the line?
war civil-war
There are some places where history just grabs you by the jugular. This is one of them.
war years firsts
I first read War And Peace about 100 years after Tolstoy wrote it.
war gone violence
But it struck me that the extreme violence and cruelty of the English Civil War had gone understated.
war fate animal
The great theme of modern British history is the fate of freedom. The 18th century inherits, after the Civil War, this very peculiar political animal. It's not a democracy, but it's not a tyranny. It's not like the rest of the world, the rest of Europe. There is a parliament, laws have to be made, elections are made.
war two america
Taxation, the very thing that had triggered the British civil wars, would do so again, this time in America. The taxes may have been different, but the result would once again be disaster. What happened in America was really round two of those wars - the civil war of the British Empire, with the Hanoverians playing the part of the Stuarts, and the Americans the heirs of the revolutionaries, of Cromwell and of William III, the inheritors of a true British liberty, that had somehow got lost in its own motherland.
stars war school
The way history is currently taught in schools, jumping from Hitler to the Henrys, is like a nightmare vision of Star Wars, where you have episode four before you have episode one. The sense of going on a journey of chronology and continuity, is incredibly important to the imagination.
apart believe brought chips jews selling
It was the Sephardi Jews who brought fish and chips to Britain, actually, believe it or not, from the Mediterranean world. Apart from actually eating and selling fish and chips, they were kind of debt enforcers.
connecting cookery cultural food
I used to have a monthly cookery column, and am a big cook, so that whole sense of connecting what one does with food to one's cultural identity has always been fascinating to me.
despite endured quite thrown understood
I understood when I was quite small that there were two special things about the Jews. That we'd endured for over 3,000 years despite everything that had been thrown at us, and that we had an extraordinarily dramatic story to tell.
antiquity built celestial medieval period
The synagogues of late antiquity and the early medieval period were built around imagery: imagery of remembering the Temple, but also of the celestial zodiac, too.
poetry
As a schoolboy, poetry seemed defined by preciousness. It was all very rarefied.