It takes a perverse determination to drain that instinctive curiosity away and make history seem just remote, dead and disconnected from our contemporary reality. Conversely, it just takes skilful storytelling to recharge that connection to make the past come alive in our present. Simon Schama Read Quote
Anyone can write an academic piece directed at other academics. To write something that delivers an argument and a gripping storyline to someone’s granny or eight-year-old takes the highest quality of your powers. Simon Schama Read Quote
History gives you insight of the same quality of truth as poetry or philosophy or a novel. Simon Schama Read Quote
I am not very relaxed about bad reviews. But I am resilient. I grieve, curse and swear, put on loud music, and get on with the next job. Simon Schama Read Quote
At 11, 12, I thought I was clumsy, ugly, a mess, an unappealing person, but I did have the gift of the gab. I had the school record at Haberdashers for consecutive detentions for simply speaking out of turn. Simon Schama Read Quote
My mother was an awful cook, an exceptionally awful kosher cook, but I stayed kosher until I got to college, even though I’d long stopped believing in God. Simon Schama Read Quote
Jewish history turns out not to be an either/or story – as in, either pure Judaism detached from its surroundings or else assimilation – but rather, for the vast majority, the adventure of living in between. Simon Schama Read Quote
I am passionately invested in the survival of Israel and everything Israel represents. But I am extremely critical of much of its policy. I believe that the occupation must end. And if it doesn’t, it will end Israel. I’m not in favor of settlements. Simon Schama Read Quote
In Mesopotamia or Egypt, for example, the monarch had a god-like religious status. But this is not the case in Judaism. So that notion that religion can go on, when all the markers of power and trappings of monarchy disappear, ultimately serves the endurance of Judaism very well. Simon Schama Read Quote
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. Simon Schama Read Quote
