Simon Schama

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University, long-time writer and broadcaster for BBC television and contributing editor at the Financial Times. His books have won the Wolfson Award for History, the W.H. Smith Prize for Literature, the National Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature and, most recently for Rough Crossings, the National Book Critics’ Circle Award for Non-Fiction (2007). His latest book, The American Future: A History was published in the spring of 2009. He has been an essayist and critic for The New Yorker since 1994, his art criticism winning the National Magazine Award in 1996. His art essays have also been collected and published as Hang-Ups, Essays on Painting (Mostly). His television work for the BBC and PBS as writer-presenter includes two films on Rembrandt; a five-part series based on Landscape and Memory; the award-winning, Emmy-nominated "A History of Britain"; a film on Tolstoy; a ninety-minute adaptation of Rough Crossings, and the eight-part "Power of Art." “Bernini” from that series won the 2007 International Emmy for best arts programme. A stage version of Rough Crossings for Headlong Theatre, written by Caryl Phillips and directed by Rupert Goold, played in Birmingham, London, Liverpool and Leeds in the autumn of 2007. His four-part series for BBC2 and The History Channel, “The American Future: A History,” aired in Britain before the presidential election of 2008, and in the United States in the spring of 2009. In February of 2010 the BBC2 also aired his two-part series “Obama’s America." His Scribble, Scribble, Scribble: Writings on Obama, Ice Cream, and My Mother, a collection of his essays, was published in August 2010. He is currently at work on a book on Jewish history.