Simon Schama

Author profile

born

in London, The United Kingdom

February 13, 1945

gender

male

genre

History, Arts & Photography, Nonfiction

About this author

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Simon Schama was born in 1945. The son of a textile merchant with Lithuanian and Turkish grandparents, he spent his early years in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex. When his parents moved to London he won a scholarship to Haberdashers’ Aske’s School where his two great loves were English and History. Forced to choose between the two he opted to read history at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Here he was taught by Sir John Plumb whose other students: Linda Colley, Roy Porter and John Brewer are now central to British historical thought. It was Plumb’s influence which instilled in him the importance of narrative and written style in order to gain an audience for history outside academia. One of the hallmarks of Schama’s work is his flair for description: ‘...more Simon Schama was born in 1945. The son of a textile merchant with Lithuanian and Turkish grandparents, he spent his early years in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex. When his parents moved to London he won a scholarship to Haberdashers’ Aske’s School where his two great loves were English and History. Forced to choose between the two he opted to read history at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Here he was taught by Sir John Plumb whose other students: Linda Colley, Roy Porter and John Brewer are now central to British historical thought. It was Plumb’s influence which instilled in him the importance of narrative and written style in order to gain an audience for history outside academia. One of the hallmarks of Schama’s work is his flair for description: ‘he gets arcane matters to walk, in fact dance, off the page’ according to fellow historian Peter Hennessy. However, his approach is contentious and invites criticism of subjectivity and populism from academic circles. Schama remained at Christ’s for 10 years after his degree, becoming a fellow and then director of Studies, before moving to Brasenose College Oxford. While at Oxford he wrote Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780-1813 (1977), which won the Wolfson Literary Award, and Two Rothschilds and the Land of Israel (1979). At Oxford he met his wife, Ginny Papaioannou a geneticist from California.

Tired of the Oxford system (he once described his experience as being ‘like a gerbil on a treadmill’) and enticed by the freedom of US Academic life, he moved to America in 1980, becoming Professor of History at Harvard. Here he wrote The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (1987), Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (1989) and Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations) (1991): an a unusual linking of the death of General Wolfe at Quebec in 1759 and the murder of a doctor, George Parkman, by a Harvard Professor in 1849. Citizens, which was written at lightening speed: 900 pages in only 18 months, won the 1990 NCR Book Award. However, Schama’s emphasis on the terror and violence of the revolution and his argument, that from its beginning it was a ‘sacrament of blood’, ensured it has never found a publisher in France. He is now professor in history and art history at Columbia where he has written Landscape and Memory (1996) which received the W H Smith Literary Award and Rembrandt’s Eyes (1999). The latter is a controversial reassessment of the artist which attempts to reinstate the notion of Rembrandt the genius, aiming to invoke the atmosphere as well as the historical context. In Schama’s view, as he tells David D’Arcy in Art Newspaper ‘There are some passages of sublime reinvention for which history has absolutely no answers…it seems to me pointless and trivial to pretend that it does.’

Simon Schama has also worked for the BBC on a 16 part series: ‘A History of Britain’ and has been an art critic and cultural essayist for The New Yorker and Talk magazine. He lives in New York with his wife and their two children Chloe and Gabriel.(less)

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Simon Schama's Books

Average rating: 3.94 · 9,703 ratings · 637 reviews · 40 distinct works · Similar authors

	The Power of Art 3.87 of 5 stars 3.87 avg rating — 3,337 ratings — published 2006 — 9 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution 3.97 of 5 stars 3.97 avg rating — 1,743 ratings — published 1989 — 19 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	At the Edge of the World?: 3500 B.C. - 1603 A.D. (A History of Britain, #1) 4.05 of 5 stars 4.05 avg rating — 971 ratings — published 2000 — 16 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age 4.07 of 5 stars 4.07 avg rating — 666 ratings — published 1987 — 8 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Landscape And Memory 4.15 of 5 stars 4.15 avg rating — 447 ratings — published 1995 — 10 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Rembrandt's Eyes 4.17 of 5 stars 4.17 avg rating — 424 ratings — published 1999 — 3 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Wars of the British, 1603-1776 (History of Britain 2) 4.02 of 5 stars 4.02 avg rating — 412 ratings — published 2001 — 13 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution 3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 avg rating — 348 ratings — published 2005 — 19 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Fate of Empire, 1776-2000 (A History of Britain, #3) 3.99 of 5 stars 3.99 avg rating — 331 ratings — published 2000 — 12 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The American Future: A History 3.7 of 5 stars 3.70 avg rating — 305 ratings — published 2008 — 25 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Simon Schama

“Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot.”
― Simon Schama, Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations

tags: historical-perspective, history

11 people liked it

“Even for the most excitable preacher, there was nothing inherently sinful about a waffle.”
― Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age

tags: history, humor, waffle

5 people liked it

“I'm helplessly and permanently a Red Sox fan. It was like first love...You never forget. It's special. It's the first time I saw a ballpark. I'd thought nothing would ever replace cricket. Wow! Fenway Park at 7 o'clock in the evening. Oh, just, magic beyond magic: never got over that”
― Simon Schama

tags: baseball, red-sox

4 people liked it

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