Simon Schama CBE

Simon Schama CBE was born in London in 1945. He has taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard Universities before going to Columbia University in 1993. His fourteen books, translated into sixteen languages from Chinese to Portuguese, include ‘The Embarrassment of Riches’, ‘An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age’; ‘Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution’, ‘Landscape and Memory’, ‘Rembrandt’s Eyes’, the ‘History of Britain’ trilogy, ‘Power of Art’, and ‘Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution’. The later was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Prize for non-fiction in the United States.

His art criticism for The New Yorker won the National magazine Award in 1996. He has written essays about the work of Christo, Cy Twombly, Anselm Kiefer, and Jenny Saville. Simon has written food and cooking essays for Vogue and he writes regularly for The Guardian on American politics; music and art. ‘The American Future: A History’, the book accompanying the BBC2 series, was published in October 2008. Simon presented a series for BBC Radio 4 called ‘A Point of View’, which was a series of ten talks related to politics, history, money and welfare.

Simons Documentaries include the award winning fifteen-part series ‘A History of Britain’, ‘Rough Crossings’ and the Emmy-winning eight-part ‘Power of Art’ first broadcast in 2006. Other of his programmes include ‘Murder at Harvard’ based on his novella ‘Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculation’, a five part series based on ‘Landscape and Memory’. Most recently he has been on the UK’s TV screens with the landmark series ‘The American Future: A History’.