Simon Schama is a British broadcaster and scholar who is famous for his limitless energy and grand-scale intellectual undertakings.
He’s a familiar figure on the BBC as well as a professor at Columbia University, and he’s produced multi-volume histories of Britain, documentaries with momentous names like The American Future and a TV series called Simon Schama’s Power of Art. He's a heavyweight scholar, best known for in-depth works on French history, Jewish history, art history and Dutch history. But he’s also a writer of great versatility who has concerned himself – through his columns for the New Yorker and the Financial Times – with a dizzying array of topics, from poetry and baseball to Tom Waits and ice-cream.
His latest book, Wordy, is the product of a life-long love affair – with language. It’s a collection of Schama’s greatest essays, spanning four decades of work, a testament to the flexibility of Schama’s own voice and the broad range of his interests. It’s also a loving tribute to Schama’s writing heroes.
Meet the peerless and eloquent Schama, in conversation with Ramona Koval at the Athenaeum Theatre in May.
Neighbourhood Books will be our bookseller at this event.
Featuring
Simon Schama
Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University. His award-winning books, translated into fifteen languages, include Citizens, Landscape and Memory, Rembrandt's Eyes, A History of Britain, The Power of Art, Rough Crossings, The American Future, The Face of Britain and The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words (1000 BCE - 1492).
His art columns for the New Yorker won the National Magazine Award for criticism and his journalism has appeared regularly in the Guardian and the Financial Times where he is Contributing Editor. He has written and presented more than fifty films for the BBC on subjects as diverse as Tolstoy, American politics, and The Story of the Jews and is co-presenter of a new landmark series on the history of world art, Civilisations.
Ramona Koval
Ramona Koval is a writer who has worked as a journalist and broadcaster. Her most recent books are A Letter to Layla: Travels to our Deep Past and Near Future, Bloodhound: Searching For My Father, and ...