Simon Schama Quotes

But it struck me that the extreme violence and cruelty of the English Civil War had gone understated.

she writes family scenes better than anyone else I can think of.

Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot.

It was a conscious decision by (Sir Robert) Walpole and others to replace religion with making money. Elections replaced battles, and the fights were over party politics.

He was a frustrated theatrical impresario, basically

We find a way (in each country) to contain our differences of opinion without annihilating one another.

A terrible vanity, really, but as you get older...

My father read Dickens out loud. My mother would say `We`re going to the workhouse`. This to me was real. I was headed for the gruel.

Walking on camera is damn hard. It`s a Jewish problem. The rangy stride across the blasted moor is not really a Jewish thing.