Simon Schama
Sir Simon Schama, CBE is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University and a Contributing Editor of the Financial Times. He is the author of nineteen books and the writer-presenter of fifty documentaries on art, history and literature for BBC2. His art criticism for The New Yorker won the National Magazine Award for criticism in 1996; his film on Bernini from The Power of Art won an Emmy in 2007 and his series on British history and The American Future: a History, Broadcast Critics Guild awards. He won the NCR non-fiction prize for Citizens, National Book Critics Circle award for Rough Crossings, the WH Smith Literary Award for Landscape and Memory. In 2015 he received the Premio Antonio Feltrinelli in historical sciences from the Accademia nazionale dei Lincei in Rome. His The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words was published in 2015 and the second volume Belonging in 2017. In the autumn of 2016, The Face of Britain, a history of British portraiture appeared as a five-part BBC television series; a book and an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. In 2018, Civilizations, a nine-part BBC television series on world art, of which he wrote and presented five. In May 2019, Wordy: Sounding off on high art, low appetite and the power of memory, was published, and in the spring of 2021 his BBC series The Romantic and Us was aired. At present, he is working on Foreing Bodies, his twentieth publication, and in a new BBC series titled Brave New World.
Image cr. Charlie Bibby
American Fervour
For most people outside the United States, America’s religious fervour conjures up images of intolerance and ultra-conservatism. But Barack Obama captured a large chunk of the evangelical vote and slavery would never have been abolished without the hot gospellers of the nineteenth century. The story of the way religion plays out in American politics is richer and more complicated than is usually understood.
With his customary panache and incomparable knowledge of history strength...
Sex, Lies and Regal Japes; The story of Esther, the sex-crazed king and his evil counsellor
A Purim Spiel, with a contemporary twist, bringing a little bit of Persia to Bloomsbury, with a backbeat of Iranian rhythms and all hosted by our favourite modern-day Sheherazade, David Schneider. Unmasking the Book of Esther we revealed the story behind the story of Purim, hatching all-new conspiracy theories and, in the spirit of the festival, blurring boundaries between good and evil, sacred and profane. Bringing the world of inversions, masks and hidden meanings to life was our all-star c...
George Webber Evening: Sixty Years On
JBW 2012 celebrated the 60th Anniversary of Jewish Book Week.
When the first Jewish Book Week took place, memories of the War were painfully fresh and Israel a fragile idealistic fledgling state; It was the year Queen Elizabeth came to the throne and The Diary of Anne Frank was published in English. The world has changed in more ways than we could have foreseen: religion is openly criticised, we live in a multicultural society, Israel has still not achieved peace with its neighbours an...
Simon Schama’s History of the Jews
The Story of the Jews and The Fate of the World is expected to be one of the most discussed books of 2013. Accompanied by a major BBC television series, it is a landmark history of a culture, a people, a world – from the time of Moses to our own.
Simon Schama presented a special preview of the book and documentary at Jewish Book Week. It describes an intellectual territory reaching from the Hebrews’ invention of a single God to Jewish responsibility for killing the saviour, to curr...
Simon Schama’s History of the Jews
Due to popular demand, Schama returned for a second visit to Jewish Book Week 2013, for a conversation with Ian Black, The Guardian’s Middle East editor, about his book and TV series. This event was not recorded.
The Story of the Jews and The Fate of the World is expected to be one of the most discussed books of 2013. Accompanied by a major BBC television series, it is a landmark history of a culture, a people, a world – from the time of Moses to our own.
Simon Schama pr...
Otto Dov Kulka in conversation with Simon Schama
Otto Dov Kulka’s Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death is a memoir of astounding literary and emotional power, exploring the permanent and indelible marks left by the Holocaust and a childhood spent in Auschwitz. As one of the few survivors he has spent much of his life studying Nazism and the Holocaust, but always as a discipline requiring the greatest dispassion and objectivity, with his personal story set to one side. He has nevertheless remained haunted by specific memories and images, ...
Simon and Chloe Schama Unravel the Father-Daughter Bond
Biographer and journalist Chloe Schama dedicated her first book, Wild Romance, to her father “who taught me how to tell a story.” Simon and Chloe engage in an intimate and lively conversation about family bonds, parental expectations, intergenerational values and the nature of creativity. Their interviewer is writer Francesca Segal, daughter of Erich Segal.
This event has live subtitles by Stagetext
Roger Cohen, Michael Ignatieff and Simon Schama on Israel’s Future
Last summer’s war between Israel and Hamas sharpened perceptions of the long-standing Israel-Palestine conflict. With an ever-more uncertain future ahead, many potential scenarios – some more pessimistic than others – are debated in the region and across the world. Roger Cohen, Michael Ignatieff and Simon Schama will consider some of these scenarios and their implications for both Israelis and Palestinians.
The Jewish Face of Britain
Simon Schama returns with a unique event devised exclusively for JBW. In his recent book, exhibition and BBC TV series, The Face of Britain, Schama examines portraits by some of the UK’s greatest artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. In this talk, he looks at the works and legacy of several major Jewish artists.
The Big Debate
The Big Debate addressed the critical issues and challenges confronting Jews today.
Comedy Question Time
The ebullient Dan Patterson, co-creator of Mock the Week, presents an evening of irreverent entertainment. Dan and the audience pose the questions. Hugh Dennis, Maureen Lipman, Simon Schama and Sindhu Bee come up with the answers. Will this hotshot comedic crew have the spirit, stamina and chutzpah to outsmart us all?
In Praise of Forgetting
David Rieff poses hard questions about whether remembrance has – or indeed ever could – inoculate the present against repeating the crimes of the past. Collective remembrance can be toxic, he argues, and sometimes it may be more moral to forget.
Ranging widely across some of the defining horrors of modern times – the Irish Troubles, the white settlement of Australia, the American Civil War, the Balkan Wars, the Holocaust and 9/11 – Rieff presents a pellucid examination of the us...
Trump ‘On Trial’
Freedland, Jacobson and Schama take on Donald Trump, at least figuratively, as they compete for bandwidth to expose the latest exploits of the Western World’s most powerful and contentious leader. The inspiration for a satire by Jacobson, a thriller by Freedland and steaming articles by Schama et al, Trump is the object of obsessive interest to everyone.
Belonging: The Story of the Jews
Simon Schama’s Belonging is alive with energy, character and colour. Written in his inimitable style, this is a magnificent cultural history. It spans centuries and continents, from the Jews’ expulsion from Spain in 1492 to the brink of the 20th century, telling the stories not just of rabbis and philosophers, but of a poetess in the ghetto of Venice, a boxer in Georgian England, a general in Ming China and an opera composer in 19th Germany. The story unfolds in Kerala and Mantua, the sta...
Amos Oz: A Tribute
Amos Oz, celebrated Israeli author, wrote over 30 novels and short stories, widely translated from the Hebrew, poignant expressions of the human condition. He was an ardent advocate for peace, who wrote passionately on the scourge of extremism. Oz famously said, ‘We can fold all the moral imperatives, the Ten Commandments, and the human virtues, into a single commandment: Thou shalt not inflict pain. That is all. Do not hurt.’
His daughter Fania Oz-Salzberger, joined by his trans...
Amos Oz: A Tribute – Live Relay
Please note this is a live streaming of the event in Hall One.
Amos Oz, celebrated Israeli author, wrote over 30 novels and short stories, widely translated from the Hebrew, poignant expressions of the human condition. He was an ardent advocate for peace, who wrote passionately on the scourge of extremism. Oz famously said, ‘We can fold all the moral imperatives, the Ten Commandments, and the human virtues, into a single commandment: Thou shalt not inflict pain. That is all. Do not h...
Jewish Arguments: Then and Now
In a world riven with bitter divisions, perverting every opportunity for dialogue, Simon Schama examined the peculiar force of contradictory argument in Jewish tradition. From its distinctive place in the Bible, to the struggle to reconcile revelation with reason in the works of Maimonides and Moses Mendelssohn, at stake is not just the character and future of Israel, but the unity or division of Jews and Judaism world-wide.
Sponsored by David and...
How to Fight Antisemitism
Antisemitism, says Bari Weiss, is ‘an ever-morphing conspiracy theory in which Jews play the starring role in spreading evil’; it is centre stage once more. It has existed for more than 2,000 years, the malignant prejudice that never dies. After the Holocaust there was a respite but today it is back, from both the political Left and the Right. New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss, whose childhood synagogue in Pittsburgh was the scene of a terrible massacre, progressiv...
Wordy: The Show
How did Simon Schama get to be so … wordy? Find out in a Jewish journey of 70-odd years (and he does mean odd) with music, stories, and some really embarrassing photos. With Nick Barstow at the piano.
In Association with The London Library
Sponsored by Dangoor Education
This event is not included in the multi-buy discount offer.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks: A Tribute
The death of Rabbi Lord Sacks left a huge void in the world of Jewish theological and philosophical writing and discourse. Jewish Book Week was honoured to have presented so many wonderful events with him, each of which showed the range of his humanity and knowledge; his contributions deepened and reflected our values, seeking always to widen the breadth of our know...
Plague and Prejudice
During the course of the pandemic – when the benefits of cooperative pursuit of knowledge have been so obvious – ignorance-based hatred and prejudice have seen a rapid rate of infection. Simon Schama explores how ‘viral prejudice’ has been an enduring ...
Simon Schama: Foreign Bodies
One of our most popular speakers returns with an exclusive event for the 70th anniversary Jewish Book Week, including a special preview of his next book, months before publication. Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations looks at Waldemar Haffkine, a Russian Jew who created vaccines against cholera and the bubonic plague before becoming the subject of ‘the Little Dreyfus affair’ when accused of contaminating a vial of plague vaccine which cause...
What Future for American Jews?
December 2022 saw the first-ever White House Roundtable on Antisemitism, with second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, describing ‘an epidemic of hate facing our country’. With Jewish students experiencing hostility and threats on campuses, spikes in antisemitic invective on social media platforms, antisemitic outbursts from some elected officials, public figures and entertainers and attacks on synagogues, does American Jewry have a future? Historian S...
“Funny, you don’t look Jewish”: Authenticity and Identity
Discovering her close friend and boss was a conman prompted Alice Sherwood’s lifelong interest in authenticity and identity, topics she explores in her award-winning book, Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture. With a rich range of stories, many of which – from the world’s greatest impostor, the human chameleon who inspired Woody Allen’s Zelig, to the Bronx-born designer accused of copying by a French couturier – explore some of the co...
Israel: A Fragile Democracy?
The opening weeks of this year saw 80,000 Israelis take to the streets of Tel Aviv, protesting the new government’s proposed sweeping changes to the judicial system. Supreme Court president Esther Hayut denounced the move, calling it a “plan to crush the justice system”, with opposition leader Yair Lapid pledging to stand by her side “in the struggle for the soul of the country”. Not everyone agrees, however: a recent Newsweek op-ed sought to brush off the controv...
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