“As far as Matthew Arnold was concerned, Hellenes and Hebrews were oil and water.1 Both were ‘august’ and, in their respective ways, ‘admirable’, but they didn’t mix. Greeks pursued self-realisation; Jews struggled at self-conquest. ‘Be obedient’ was the sovereign command… — Simon Schama Copy Share Image
Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat… — Simon Schama Copy Share
The difficulty with poetry is that it doesn't have the life that Shakespeare or Jane Austen have beyond the page. You can't make a… — Simon Schama Copy Share
Taxation, the very thing that had triggered the British civil wars, would do so again, this time in America. The taxes may have been… — Simon Schama Copy Share
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… — Simon Schama Copy Share
In its Greek origins, historia meant inquiry, and from Thucydides onwards, the past has been studied to understand its connections with the present. — Simon Schama Copy Share
Jewish history turns out not to be an either/or story - as in, either pure Judaism detached from its surroundings or else assimilation -… — Simon Schama Copy Share
Growing up in Britain as a rather loose Jew, the two things that didn't belong together were freedom and religious intensity. In America, they… — Simon Schama Copy Share
In the end, history, especially British history with its succession of thrilling illuminations, should be, as all her most accomplished narrators have promised, not… — Simon Schama Copy Share
From 1789, perhaps even before that, it had been the willingness of politicians to exploit either the threat or the fact of violence that… — Simon Schama Copy Share
The default mode of modern writing about art is to despise any notion of singularity as so much overheated genius-fetishism. — Simon Schama Copy Share
The synagogues of late antiquity and the early medieval period were built around imagery: imagery of remembering the Temple, but also of the celestial… — Simon Schama Copy Share
At 11, 12, I thought I was clumsy, ugly, a mess, an unappealing person, but I did have the gift of the gab. I… — Simon Schama Copy Share
We seem wired to grieve with greenery. Allowing the dead to dissolve into the earth, to become part of the cycle of the seasons,… — Simon Schama Copy Share
The older I get, the more I want to do. It beats death, decay or golf in unfortunate trousers. Peace and quiet depress me. — Simon Schama Copy Share
The Elephantine papyri - written as some of the books of the Bible are being written - is true social and legal documentation, and… — Simon Schama Copy Share
