Simon Schama

He specialises in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history, and French history. He is a Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University.

Sir Simon Schama CBE FBA FRHistS FRSL
At the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award presentation in 2013
Born	Simon Michael Schama (1945-02-13) 13 February 1945 (age 79) Marylebone, London, England
Partner	Virginia Papaioannou
Children	2
Awards	Wolfson History Prize Leo Gershoy Award Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
Academic background
Education	Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School
Alma mater	Christ's College, Cambridge
Academic work
Discipline	History and art history
Sub-discipline	British history European history Jewish history Eighteenth century French Revolution Patriottentijd Dutch Golden Age
Institutions	Christ's College, Cambridge Brasenose College, Oxford School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris Harvard University Columbia University
Simon Schama's voice Recorded December 2013 from the BBC Radio 4 programme Start the Week

Schama first came to public attention with his history of the French Revolution titled Citizens, published in 1989. He is also known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC television documentary series A History of Britain (2000—2002), as well as other documentary series such as The American Future: A History (2008) and The Story of the Jews (2013).

Schama was knighted in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours List.

Schama was born on 13 February 1945 in Marylebone, London. His mother, Gertie (née Steinberg), was from an Ashkenazi Lithuanian Jewish family (from Kaunas, present-day Lithuania), and his father, Arthur Schama, was of Sephardi Jewish background (from Smyrna, present-day İzmir in Turkey), later moving through Moldova and Romania.

In the mid-1940s, the family moved to Southend-on-Sea in Essex before moving back to London. In 1956, Schama won a scholarship to the private Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Cricklewood (from 1961 Elstree, Hertfordshire). He then studied history at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he was taught by John H. Plumb. He graduated from the University of Cambridge with a Starred First in 1966.

From 1966 to 1976, Schama was a fellow and director of studies in history at Christ's College, Cambridge. He then moved to Oxford University, where he was elected a fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford in 1976, specialising in the French Revolution. He also worked at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris.

At this time, Schama wrote his first book, Patriots and Liberators, which won the Wolfson History Prize. The book was originally intended as a study of the French Revolution, but as published in 1977, it focused on the effect of the Patriottentijd revolution of the 1780s in the Netherlands, and its aftermath.

His second book, Two Rothschilds and the Land of Israel (1978), is a study of the Zionist aims of Edmond and James Rothschild.

In the United States

In 1980, Schama took up a chair at Harvard University as Mellon Professor of History. His next book, The Embarrassment of Riches (1987), again focused on Dutch history. Schama interpreted the ambivalences that informed the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, held in balance between the conflicting imperatives, to live richly and with power, or to live a godly life. The iconographic evidence that Schama draws upon, in 317 illustrations, of emblems and propaganda that defined Dutch character, prefigured his expansion in the 1990s as a commentator on art and visual culture.

External videos
Booknotes interview with Schama, July 14, 1989, C-SPAN

Citizens (1989), written at speed to a publisher's commission, saw the publication of his long-awaited study of the French Revolution, and won the 1990 NCR Book Award. Its view that the violence of the Terror was inherent from the start of the Revolution, however, has received serious negative criticism.

Schama appeared as an on-screen expert in Michael Wood's 1989 PBS series Art of the Western World ("Realms of Light: The Baroque") as a presenting art historian, commenting on paintings by Diego Velázquez, Rembrandt, and Johannes Vermeer.

In 1991, he published Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations), a relatively slender work of unusual structure and point-of-view in that it looked at two widely reported deaths a hundred years apart, that of British Army General James Wolfe in 1759 – and the famous 1770 painting depicting the event by Benjamin West – and that of George Parkman, murdered uncle of the better known 19th-century American historian Francis Parkman.

Schama mooted some possible (invented) connections between the two cases, exploring the historian's inability "ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing the documentation", and speculatively bridging "the teasing gap separating a lived event and its subsequent narration." Not all readers absorbed the nuance of the title: it received a very mixed critical and academic reception. Traditional historians in particular denounced Schama's integration of fact and conjecture to produce a seamless narrative, but later assessments took a more relaxed view of the experiment.

It was an approach soon taken up by such historical writers as Peter Ackroyd, David Taylor, and Richard Holmes.

Schama's next book, Landscape and Memory (1995), focused on the relationship between physical environment and folk memory, separating the components of landscape as wood, water and rock, enmeshed in the cultural consciousness of collective "memory" embodied in myths, which Schama finds to be expressed outwardly in ceremony and text. More personal and idiosyncratic than Dead Certainties, this book was more traditionally structured and better-defined in its approach. Despite mixed reviews, the book was a commercial success and won numerous prizes.

Plaudits came from the art world rather than from traditional academia. Schama became art critic for The New Yorker in 1995. He held the position for three years, dovetailing his regular column with professorial duties at Columbia University; a selection of his essays on art for the magazine, chosen by Schama himself, was published in 2005 under the title Hang Ups. During this time, Schama also produced a lavishly illustrated Rembrandt's Eyes, another critical and commercial success. Despite the book's title, it contrasts the biographies of Rembrandt van Rijn and Peter Paul Rubens.

BBC

External videos
Presentation by Schama on A History of Britain: 3500 B.C. - 1603 A.D., December 5, 2000, C-SPAN

Schama returned to the UK in 2000, having been commissioned by the BBC to produce a series of television documentary programmes on British history as part of their Millennium celebrations, under the title A History of Britain. Schama wrote and presented the episodes himself, in a friendly and often jocular style with his highly characteristic delivery, and was rewarded with excellent reviews and unexpectedly high ratings. There has been, however, some irritation and criticism expressed by a group of historians about Schama's condensed recounting of the British Isles' history on this occasion, particularly by those specialising in the pre-Anglo-Saxon history of Insular Celtic civilisation. Three series were made, totalling 15 episodes, covering the complete span of British history up until 1965; it went on to become one of the BBC's best-selling documentary series on DVD. Schama also wrote a trilogy of tie-in books for the show, which took the story up to the year 2000; there is some debate as to whether the books are the tie-in product for the TV series, or the other way around. The series also had some popularity in the United States when it was first shown on the History Channel.

External videos
After Words interview with Schama on Rough Crossings, July 22, 2006, C-SPAN
Presentation by Schama on Rough Crossings, June 26, 2006, C-SPAN

In 2001, Schama received a CBE. In 2003, he signed a new contract with the BBC and HarperCollins to produce three new books and two accompanying TV series. Worth £3 million (around US$5.3m), it represents the biggest advance deal ever for a TV historian. The first result of the deal was a book and TV show entitled Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution, dealing in particular with the proclamation issued during the Revolutionary War by Lord Dunmore offering slaves from rebel plantations freedom in return for service to the crown.

In 2006, the BBC broadcast a new TV series, Simon Schama's Power of Art, which, with an accompanying book, was presented and written by Schama. It marks a return to art history for him, treating eight artists through eight key works: Caravaggio's David with the Head of Goliath, Bernini's Ecstasy of St Theresa, Rembrandt's Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, Jacques-Louis David's The Death of Marat, J. M. W. Turner's The Slave Ship, Vincent van Gogh's Wheat Field with Crows, Picasso's Guernica and Mark Rothko's Seagram murals. It was also shown on PBS in the United States.

External videos
Presentation by Schama on The American Future: A History, May 19, 2009, C-SPAN
Presentation by Schama on The American Future: A History, September 26, 2009, C-SPAN

 

In October 2008, on the eve of the presidential election won by Barack Obama, the BBC broadcast a four-part television series called The American Future: A History presented and written by Schama. In March 2009, Schama presented a BBC Radio 4 show entitled Baseball and Me, both exploring the history of the game and describing his own personal support of the Boston Red Sox.

In 2010, Schama presented a series of ten talks for the BBC Radio 4 series A Point of View.

External videos
Presentation by Schama on The Story of the Jews, March 27, 2014, C-SPAN

In 2011, the BBC commissioned Simon Schama to write and present a five-part series called A History of the Jews for BBC Two, for transmission in 2012, The title became The Story of the Jews and broadcast was delayed until September 2013. Writing in The Observer, Andrew Anthony called the series "an astonishing achievement, a TV landmark."

In 2018, Simon Schama wrote and presented five of the nine episodes of Civilisations, a reboot of the 1969 series by Kenneth Clark.

Schama is Jewish. He is married to Virginia Papaioannou, a geneticist from California; they have two children, Chloe and Gabriel. As of 2014, Schama resides in Briarcliff Manor, New York. He is a Tottenham Hotspur supporter.

Politics

In 2010, Schama was a financial donor to Oona King's unsuccessful campaign to become Mayor of London.

In August 2014, Schama was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.

In November 2017, Schama joined Simon Sebag Montefiore and Howard Jacobson in writing a letter to The Times about their concern over antisemitism in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, with particular reference to a growth in Anti-Zionism and its purported "antisemitic characteristics". Schama and Sebag Montefiore have both written historical works about Israel, while Jacobson has written regularly about Israel and the UK Jewish community in his newspaper columns. Schama made a further criticism of the party in July 2019, when he joined other leading Jewish figures in saying, in a letter to The Guardian, that the crisis was "a taint of international and historic shame" and that trust in the party was "fractured beyond repair".

Israel

Schama was critical of British art critic John Berger's support for the Palestinian call for an academic boycott of Israel. Writing in The Guardian in a 2006 article co-authored with Anthony Julius, Schama compared the open letter written by Berger and signed by 92 other leading artists to Nazi Germany, saying: "This is not the first boycott call directed at Jews. On 1 April 1933, only weeks after he came to power, Hitler ordered a boycott of Jewish shops, banks, offices and department stores."

In 2006 on the BBC, Schama debated with Vivienne Westwood the morality of Israel's actions in the Israel-Lebanon War. He described Israel's bombing of Lebanese city centres as unhelpful to Israel's attempt to "get rid of" Hezbollah. He said: "Of course the spectacle and suffering makes us grieve. Who wouldn't grieve? But it's not enough to do that. We've got to understand. You've even got to understand Israel's point of view."

United States

Schama was a supporter of President Barack Obama and a critic of George W. Bush. He appeared on the BBC's coverage of the 2008 US presidential election, clashing with John Bolton.

Niall Ferguson praised Schama, "Amongst [historians] currently writing, Simon Schama stands out as the Dickens of modern historiography: bewilderingly erudite and prolific, passionate in his enthusiasms and armed with the complete contents of the thesaurus."

• 1977: Wolfson History Prize, for Patriots and Liberators
• 1977: Leo Gershoy Award, for Patriots and Liberators
• 1987: New York Times Best Books of the Year, for The Embarrassment of Riches
• 1989: New York Times Best Books of the Year, for Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
• 1989: Yorkshire Post Book Award, for Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
• 1990: NCR Book Award, for Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
• 1992: American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature
• 1995: Elected to Honorary Fellowship, Christ's College, Cambridge
• 1996: Lionel Trilling Book Award, for Landscape and Memory
• 1996: National Magazine Awards, for critical essays in The New Yorker
• 1996: WH Smith Literary Award, for Landscape and Memory
• 2001: St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates
• 2001: Broadcasting Press Guild Writer's Award, for A History of Britain
• 2001: Nominated for BAFTA Huw Wheldon Award for Specialised Programme or Series (Arts, History, Religion and Science), for A History of Britain
• 2002: Nominated for BAFTA Richard Dimbleby Award for the Best Presenter (Factual, Features and News), for A History of Britain
• 2003: Nominated for Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Writing Emmy Award for The Two Winstons, an episode of A History of Britain
• 2006: National Book Critics Circle Award for Non-fiction winner, for Rough Crossings
• 2006: Hessell-Tiltman Prize Shortlist, for Rough Crossings
• 2007: International Emmy Award, for Bernini, an episode of Simon Schama's Power of Art
• 2007: Nominated for BAFTA Huw Wheldon Award for Specialised Factual Programme or Series, for Simon Schama's Power of Art
• 2008: The Daily Telegraph's 110 Best Books: The Perfect Library, for Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
• 2011: Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement
• 2015: Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy
• 2015: Feltrinelli Prize for History
• 2017: Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
• 2018: Knight Bachelor, for services to history

Commonwealth honours

Commonwealth honours

Country	Date	Appointment	Post-nominal letters
United Kingdom	2001 – Present	Commander of the Order of the British Empire	CBE
United Kingdom	2018 – Present	Knight Bachelor	Kt

Scholastic

University degrees

Location	Date	School	Degree
England	1966	Christ's College, Cambridge	Starred First Bachelor of Arts (BA) in History

Chancellor, visitor, governor, rector and fellowships

Location	Date	School	Position
England	1995 – Present	Christ's College, Cambridge	Honorary Fellow
England	12 December 2012–Present	Queen Mary University of London	Honorary Fellow
England	2015 – 2016	Trinity College, Oxford	Visiting Professor of Historiography
England		Brasenose College, Oxford	Fellow

Honorary degrees

Location	Date	School	Degree	Gave Commencement Address
New York	20 May 1990	Adelphi University	Doctor of Humane Letters (DHL)
England	5 November 1999	University of Greenwich	Doctor of Letters (D.Litt)
Newfoundland and Labrador	October 2002	Memorial University of Newfoundland	Doctor of Letters (D.Litt)
New York	24 May 2003	Bard College	Doctorate
England	21 July 2006	University of Essex	Doctor of the University (D.Univ)
England	2007	Anglia Ruskin University	Doctor of the University (D.Univ)
Pennsylvania	2009	Gettysburg College	Doctorate
England	2010	Royal College of Art	Doctorate
England	19 May 2011	Royal Holloway, University of London	Doctor of Literature (D.Litt)
Israel	29 March 2015	Weizmann Institute of Science	Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D)	Yes

Memberships and Fellowships

Location	Date	Organisation	Position
United Kingdom	2015 – Present	British Academy	Fellow (FBA)
United Kingdom	2017 – Present	Royal Society of Literature	Fellow (FRSL)

Books

• 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, ISBN 0394222202)
• Landscape and Memory (1995, ISBN 0679402551)
• Rembrandt's Eyes (1999, ISBN 0676593925)
• A History of Britain Vol. I (2000, ISBN 0-563-48714-3)
• A History of Britain Vol. II (2001, ISBN 0-563-48718-6)
• A History of Britain Vol. III (2002, ISBN 0-563-48719-4)
• Hang Ups: Essays on Art (2004, ISBN 0563521732)
• Rough Crossings (2005, ISBN 0-06-053916-X)
• Simon Schama's Power of Art (2006, ISBN 0-06-117610-9)
• The American Future: A History (2009, ISBN 0-06-053923-2)
• Scribble, Scribble, Scribble: Writing on Politics, Ice Cream, Churchill and My Mother (2011, ISBN 978-0062009869)
• The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000 BCE–1492 CE, Volume I (2013, Bodley Head, ISBN 9781847921321)
• The Face of Britain: The Nation through Its Portraits (2015, ISBN 9780241963715)
• Belonging: The Story of the Jews, 1492–1900, Volume II (2017, Bodley Head, ISBN 9781847922809)
• Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations (2023, ISBN 9781471169892)

Television documentaries

• Landscape and Memory (1995), in five parts
• Rembrandt: The Public Eye and the Private Gaze (1995)
• A History of Britain by Simon Schama – BBC (2000), in 15 parts
• Murder at Harvard – PBS (2003)
• Rough Crossings – BBC (2005)
• Simon Schama's Power of Art – BBC (2006), in eight parts
• The American Future: A History – BBC (2008), in four parts
• Simon Schama's John Donne – BBC (2009)
• Simon Schama's Obama's America – BBC (2009)
• Simon Schama's Shakespeare – BBC (2012)
• The Story of the Jews – BBC (2013), in five parts
• Schama on Rembrandt: Masterpieces of the Late Years – BBC (2014)
• The Face of Britain by Simon Schama – BBC (2015), in five parts
• Civilisations – BBC (2018), five of nine parts
• The Romantics and Us with Simon Schama – BBC (2020) 3 episodes: Passions of the People; The Chambers of the Mind; Tribes
• Simon Schama's History of Now - BBC (2022) 3 episodes: Truth and Democracy; Equality; The Price of Plenty