A special episode with historian, academic, documentary maker, journalist, cultural polymath and keen fiction reader Simon Schama. Listen in to find out what sends him to sleep happy, how his reading informs his writing, his favourite bookstores, his views on the pleasure of imperfect books, and best of all a ton of book suggestions and a brilliant book club recommendation just for us.

Books by Simon Schama include:

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution
The Embarrassment Of Riches: An Interpretation Of Dutch Culture In The Golden Age
Belonging: The Story of the Jews 1492–1900

Books mentioned on this episode:

War and Peace, Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
A Sentimental Education Flaubert
In the First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa
Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
The General and His Labyrinth by Gabriel García Márquez
Memoirs of Hadrian and That Mighty Sculptor, Time by Marguerite Yourcenar
'Don't Look Now' and 'The Birds' Daphne du Maurier
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books by Edward Wilson-Lee

34. Simon Schama interview 16:51 Share

The Book Club Review

Shownotes Transcript

34. Simon Schama interview