Simon Schama

Born in London, Simon Schama studied history at Christ's College, Cambridge, graduating with a Starred First. He went on to become a lecturer, specialising in Dutch, French and Jewish history and art history, and has taught at Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, among others. Schama has worked as an art critic for the New Yorker and written and presented several hugely popular documentaries for the BBC, including A History of Britain (2000), Simon Schama's Power of Art (2006) and the epic A History of the Jews (2011), as well as a series of talks for BBC Radio 4. In 2018, Schama was knighted by the Queen in 2018 for his services to history and holds a professorship in History and Art History at Columbia University.

Schama has written over eighteen works of non-fiction and won various awards, including the Wolfson History Prize for his first book Patriots and Liberators in 1977. His other critically acclaimed works include Citizens (1989) that explores the French Revolution, the three-volume A History of Britain (2000-2002), The Story of the Jews (2013), Belonging (2017), and Foreign Bodies (2023) which combines medicine with politics, history and culture to reflect on how humanity’s reaction to pandemics has changed over centuries.