Simon Michael Schama, CBE (born 13 February 1945) is a British historian specialising in art history, Dutch history, and French history. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University, New York. He first came to popular public attention with his history of the French Revolution titled Citizens, published in 1989. In the United Kingdom, he is perhaps best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC television documentary series A History of Britain broadcast between 2000 and 2002.
Barack Obama's not good at all on TV. His body language is all wrong... And he has this strange, literal, nose-in-the-air look ... like someone who's turned up for Plato's Symposium and finds himself in Big Brother. He does have a very friendly, easy manner in small gatherings. There's just something rigidly professorial about it. The Republican bet is that, if they can get it back to small politics, the cult of affinity - 'Who would you rather have round to dinner?' - then they'll win.
2
[on the subject of American religion the Atlantic feels at its widest] partly because we've come such a long way from Victorian piety... The notion that religion can actually be something... attached to progressivism seems so bizarre. But all you have to say is that Abolition wouldn't have happened without it. The way in which African Americans managed to achieve a degree of self-determination was through the church.
3
I would want the British reader to feel that religion in America isn't an absurd thing - a sign of a pin head athwart a gigantic body. The antidote to [Robert Putnam's book] 'Bowling Alone' is absolutely school and church." [the twin pillars of a neighbourliness that flourishes in New England as it seldom still does in the old one.] "I remember when we moved into Moon Hill [in Massachusetts], the mail box was not big enough to take the cakes and cookies which said, 'Hello!'. It wouldn't have happened in the Cowley Road.
4
[If Barack Obama is elected, the rest of the world may have a shock.] I don't know what they expect from him, but the notion that then there'll be Nelson Mandela or something will not happen. They have to understand that he's an intense American patriot. [In Afghanistan] he will run that war very, very hard; harder than George W. Bush - and the world may not like that.
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Fact
1
A professor, writer, and art historian in Briarcliff Manor, New York. [June 2011]
2
He is a professor of Art History and history at Columbia University in New York City. His wife is also a professor of genetics and development at Columbia University.
3
Father of Chloe Frances Schama (born in 1983) and father-in-law of Michael Jason Pyle (born in 1978).
4
He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2001 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to History and Art Criticism.
Writer
Title
Year
Status
Character
Schama on Rembrandt: Masterpieces of the Late Years
2014
TV Movie documentary
The Story of the Jews
2013
TV Series documentary 5 episodes
Simon Schama's Shakespeare
2012
TV Mini-Series 2 episodes
The American Future: A History
2008
TV Mini-Series documentary written by - 4 episodes
Rough Crossings
2007
TV Movie
Simon Schama's Power of Art
TV Series documentary 5 episodes, 2006 writer - 2 episodes, 2006
$250,000
