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“... episodes of our past become a connected narrative. Well, this trashing of our past has to stop. Simon Schama is the person entrusted with the job of putting things right; Schama, the education secretary announced, ‘has agreed to advise us on how we can put British history at the heart of a revived national ...”

“... rivals. Some greatest hits from recent historical writing are converted into Post-Modernists – Simon Schama, Robert Darnton, Natalie Zemon Davis and Orlando Figes. But Evans never cites an instance of these authors even borrowing the Post-Modernist label, let alone one showing that they conceive of themselves as working on behalf of an intellectual ...”

“... It has received a lot of attention lately, retold vindictively by V.S.Naipaul, operatically by Simon Schama. In this celebration of a possible Good Imperialist (good beyond the inherent virtues of failure), Charles Nicholl unearths more detail and offers more seductive speculation than any previous writer. With the vigorous Return of the Subject that ...”

“... columnists, bloodlust aroused by the denunciations of the show on the part of Daniel Boorstin and Simon Schama, among others, tossed the following about on their bayonets as the quintessence of Political Correctness: In another passage Leutze raises (literally) the sacrifice issue again and turns it more conclusively against the Aztecs. Prescott ...”

“... The book is a posthumous Festschrift for the Harvard historian John Clive (here fondly recalled by Simon Schama). Clive’s fascination with England and its history went back to the period in the late Thirties when, as a young German Jewish refugee (he arrived as Hans Kleyff), he was exposed to the rigours of a minor public school. For the rest of his ...”

“... have seen if he’d consulted the speeches of Mirabeau fils to the National Assembly rather than Simon Schama. I hope I can now resolve a problem that perplexed both Smith and Ross. Smith ended his encomium of Hume with these words, which echo Plato’s eulogy of Socrates in the Phaedo: ‘Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his ...”

“... passages of reconstruction, of supposition, of – let us spit the word out – fiction. Like Simon Schama he is dealing in ‘dead certainties’ and ‘unwarranted speculations’. But within the text the line is clearly drawn. The critic cannot claim to be confused. On the afternoon of 29 February, John Williams and the other Deerfield prisoners ...”

“... Convention to enact the Law of 22 Prairial. Their unilateral action was of a piece with a document Simon Schama describes as ‘the founding charter of totalitarian justice’. The Law of 22 Prairial reorganised the Revolutionary Tribunal in order to speed up trials, and criminalised nebulous offences like ‘spreading false news’, ‘slandering ...”

“... public could watch serious debate between historical experts. Now they listen to the platitudes of Simon Schama or watch David Starkey astride the gun barrel of a tank pontificating about Henry VIII. Blair Worden, leading revisionist and elder statesman of 17th-century political history, is on record as worrying that ‘public life has never been less ...”

“... Samuel Johnson, James Boswell and many others . . .’), for all the world like a print version of Simon Schama. One can almost see the make-up and microphone. It is a smart rather than deep study, with more wit than soul. Groom’s rather predictably provocative thesis is that the forged work is actually the truest one – a case which, in rehearsing a ...”

“... whose power has never faded. It is an indicator of Cassatt’s return to wider fashion that Simon Schama included two of her ‘Japanese’ prints in an episode of the TV show Civilisations, while in a later one David Olusoga brought In the Loge to his argument. A print from 1896 In Little Girl in a Blue Armchair (1877-78) a girl of perhaps ...”

“... traditionalist case in eclectic, omnivorous, postmodern guise, like a mixture of John Bayley and Simon Schama. And in typically postmodern style, the critical yields ground to the descriptive and anecdotal. Creation resounds with a hymn of praise to the all-fruitful individual artist; yet the book’s own author, sheltering as he does behind densely ...”

“... States, told me he found out about the black loyalists only when he came across recent books by Simon Schama and Cassandra Pybus. Last year he released an album called Black Loyalist to celebrate their history. But the president of the Krio Descendants’ Union explained to me that the memory of the loyalists can’t so easily serve as a source of ...”

“... justify social commitments, and a broad slice of the populace tunes in whenever David Starkey or Simon Schama goes on the air to talk about anything from Rembrandt to revolution, Taylor is due some small share of the credit. The populism to which popular history is prone will always make intellectuals nervous, but we would do well to bear in mind that ...”

“... and a disgusting drip.’ The physicalist party, note, is not always for celebrating the body. Simon Schama in his introduction says that Porter ventures where most historians fear: into Greek metaphysics, Christian theology, Cartesian philosophy. My complaint is that he sets out on this brave journey but then does not go far enough. The broad ...”