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 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.
Books in order of publication:
Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780–1813 (1977)
Two Rothschilds and the Land of Israel (1978)
The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (1987)
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (1989)
Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations (1991)
Landscape and Memory (1995)
Rembrandt’s Eyes (1999)
A History of Britain Vol. I (2000)
A History of Britain Vol. II (2001)
A History of Britain Vol. III (2002)
Hang Ups: Essays on Art (2004)
Rough Crossings (2005)
Simon Schama’s Power of Art (2006)
The American Future: A History (2009)
Scribble, Scribble, Scribble: Writing on Politics, Ice Cream, Churchill and My Mother (2011)
The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000 BCE–1492 CE, Volume I (2013, Bodley Head,)
The Face of Britain: The Nation through Its Portraits (2015)
Belonging: The Story of the Jews, 1492–1900, Volume II (2017, Bodley Head,)
Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations (2023)
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