Almost everywhere else in Europe, the more military the state, the stronger the king - except in Britain. Here it was parliament, not the monarchy, who signed the cheques. The longer the war went on, the stronger parliament became, as… — Simon Schama Copy Share Image
The great theme of modern British history is the fate of freedom. The 18th century inherits, after the Civil War, this very peculiar political animal. It's not a democracy, but it's not a tyranny. It's not like the rest of… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
