Simon Schama Audiobooks

The island story from the presenter of the BBC series: A History of Britain, Volume 1

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Who is Simon Schama?

Sir Simon Schama, born in 1945, is an English historian and television presenter, and one of the few academics to have become a genuinely famous public figure. A specialist in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history and French history, he is a professor of history and art history at Columbia University. He first came to wide public attention with Citizens, his 1989 history of the French Revolution.

For British audiences, though, Schama is above all the face and voice of A History of Britain, the fifteen-part BBC documentary series broadcast between 2000 and 2002 that put narrative history back at the centre of mainstream television. Later series included The American Future: A History and The Story of the Jews, and he was knighted in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Simon Schama in audiobooks

A History of Britain: Volume 1 is the Schama title in our catalogue, and it comes with a rare pedigree: this is history from the writer and presenter of the BBC’s fifteen-part series of the same name, a man whose sentences were built to be spoken aloud. That broadcasting instinct matters enormously in audio – the narrative sweep, the vivid scene-setting, the feel for where a story turns. For UK listeners this is home ground: the island story told with scholarship and showmanship in equal measure, and a natural first step for anyone who wants their national history as narrative rather than textbook.