A special interview with Simon Schama, historian, academic, documentary maker, journalist, cultural polymath and keen fiction reader.
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. Plus a brilliant book club recommendation just for us.
Book recommendations
- War and Peace and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- A Sentimental Education by Gustave 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
Notes
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
