HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2023-10-09T10:59:37.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: “Humans are a marvel of ingenuity, yet we seem to exist in this great pond of primitive terror and paranoia”: Simon Schama on pandemics and vaccines
items: Simon Schama on how inoculation changed the world
items: Simon Schama on the Romantics
items: Schama on 'Civilisations'
items: Books interview: Simon Schama
items: Simon Schama's portraits of a nation
items: Simon Schama on American history

“Humans are a marvel of ingenuity, yet we seem to exist in this great pond of primitive terror and paranoia”: Simon Schama on pandemics and vaccines
type: item
date: 2023-07-18T10:29:01.000Z
creator: Sir Simon Schama
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: For centuries, scientists have striven to combat a whole host of infectious diseases. Yet, as Simon Schama explains in his new book, Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations, they have often met with considerable opposition
encoded: Q: You write in your new book that you are acutely conscious of being a newcomer to medical and scientific history. What drew you to this subject? It won’t surprise anybody to learn that the pandemic played a large role. I thought: if there’s a moment when nationalism needs to be set aside for the common good, it’s now, when people need to share vaccines. I was quickly disabused, of course, by nations leapfrogging over each other to secure supplies of vaccines in advance. But that disappointing moment led me, via the World Health Organization’s website, to the International Sanitary Conferences held from the mid-19th century, which were the first example of international organisation outside religious institutions, military alliances or peace conferences. On the podcast | Simon Schama discusses how scientific ingenuity and the fear of contagion combined to produce life-saving vaccines This, suddenly, felt very much like the right subject for a book. My wife is a biologist, so I asked her: “Is this ridiculous? Will I perish with a terminal case of imposter syndrome?” But she encouraged me. I think something happens when you’re a really old geezer, too: you either want to escape completely into a hobby – Byzantine coinage in the 11th century, perhaps – or, if you’re like me, you only want to do history with an immediate link to what’s happening right now. The first section of your book focuses on the fight against smallpox. How disruptive was that disease at its peak in Europe? It was extraordinarily contagious and apocalyptically terrifying. It ran amok in crowded urban environments, killing as many as one in three people who contracted it. Plague had been even more frightening in the late Middle Ages and 17th century, but had somewhat retreated by the early 18th century, so people had been lulled into a false sense of security. Within 100 years, fortunately, there was a great breakthrough against smallpox with the first mass inoculation campaign. It seemed such a co…

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Simon Schama on how inoculation changed the world
type: item
date: 2023-05-29T06:10:37.000Z
creator: Matt Elton
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Simon Schama discusses how scientific ingenuity and the fear of contagion combined to produce life-saving vaccines
encoded: As the recent past will attest, the discovery of vaccines can not only save lives, but also change the course of human history. Speaking with Matt Elton, Simon Schama explores the story of inoculation, charting the individuals and organisations who played a pivotal role in its use against deadly diseases including plague, smallpox and cholera. Simon Schama is the author of Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations (Simon & Schuster, 2023) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones

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Simon Schama on the Romantics
type: item
date: 2020-09-09T14:25:07.000Z
creator: Sir Simon Schama
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
description: Simon Schama explores the legacy of the 18th and 19th-century artistic movement on the modern world
encoded: Ahead of his new BBC Two series The Romantics and Us, the renowned art historian and broadcaster Simon Schama explores the legacy of the 18th and 19th-century artistic movement on the modern world.

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Schama on 'Civilisations'
type: item
date: 2018-03-01T13:30:22.000Z
creator: Sir Simon Schama
subject: Ancient Egypt
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: General prehistory
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Victorian
description: Simon Schama discusses his experiences of making the major new BBC arts history series Civilisations
encoded: As the major new BBC arts history series Civilisations is due to air, we speak to Simon Schama, one of its three presenters, to discuss the making of the series and how he was inspired by Kenneth Clark’s original.

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Books interview: Simon Schama
type: item
date: 2017-12-01T16:43:57.000Z
creator: Sir Simon Schama
subject: Early medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
description: Simon Schama speaks to Ellie Cawthorne about his new book, which looks at the lives of Jews – from rabbis to bare-knuckle boxers – across four centuries…
encoded: This article was first published in the December 2017 edition of BBC History Magazine Your new book spans more than 400 years of Jewish history – from the turn of the 16th century to the end of the 19th. What are some of the central themes you cover? For more than half a millennium, the life of a Jew was one where you never knew whether you were going to be holed up in a ghetto, expelled from your country, or accused of murdering Christian children to drink their blood. It could be a very transitory life. What intrigued me was what Jews could make of that transitory life while staying put in one religion. My central theme was whether or not Jews were given the chance to fulfil two compatible lives – one as a member of the country in which they settled, the other being life as a Jew. While some countries made that relatively easy, others made it incredibly difficult. That’s the real heart of the book, and the idea behind the title Belonging. How did different societies across the globe view and treat Jews in this period? It really depended what the dominant religion was in any given society. In most of the societies that I discuss it was Christianity. Jews in Christian societies laboured under two difficulties. Firstly, they were inevitably part of the Christian story. Christians believed that the second coming couldn’t happen – in other words the entire Christian story couldn’t be fulfilled – unless the Jews became Christians. So there was a constant pressure to convert. Sometimes, close proximity or friendship between Jewish rabbis and enlightened cardinals yielded real mutual sympathy on this issue. But at other times, the inability – or impossibility – of converting Jews created an extraordinary sense of grudge. It could trigger irrational fury. This obstinacy also stoked a feeling that Jews could never be persuaded to convert because they only ultimately belonged to each other and to themselves. Christian societies also saw the horrific perpetuation of the idea …

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Simon Schama's portraits of a nation
type: item
date: 2015-10-02T07:00:17.000Z
creator: Sir Simon Schama
subject: General Modern
subject: Georgian
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Tudor
subject: Victorian
description: In 2015, Simon Schama joined forces with the National Portrait Gallery and the BBC to explore the history and development of British portraiture. Here, using the themes of love, people, fame, self and power, Simon selects some of the most significant British photographs, paintings and caricatures of the past 800 years...
encoded: This article was first published in the October 2015 issue of BBC History Magazine Love Alice Liddell by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), 1860 and 1870 Charles Dodgson, better known by his pen name of Lewis Carroll, met the Liddell family in 1856. Dodgson would entertain Alice and her siblings with his stories, and they in turn became the subjects of another of his passions: photography. Alice – pictured below left when she was eight – was a particular favourite of the aspiring writer, becoming the inspiration for the high-spirited Alice in his 1865 children’s classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. “Like many Victorian image-makers, Dodgson loved to capture pictures of children – particularly girls – during their ‘age of innocence’, before the awkwardness of adolescence set in,” says Simon Schama. “The frank, composed stare of the young, fresh-faced Alice in contrast to the passive-aggressive pose of her 20-year-old self suggests a dramatic change in the sitter during the 10-year period between the two sittings.” Dodgson had, in fact, cut contact with the Liddells at some point between the two sittings. Some speculated that Alice’s mother had grown uncomfortable with his attentions towards her daughter, or that his infatuation with Alice had even to led to a proposal of marriage. King George IV by Richard Cosway, c1780–82 Designed to be kept on, or about, the body like a piece of jewellery, miniature portraits – mainly of loved ones, and often boasting accompanying locks of hair – peaked in popularity during the 18th century. The future George IV – a hopeless romantic – was a particular fan of the genre, and almost always sent the object of his devotion a miniature of himself. The image below, which may have been painted as a gift for actress Mary Robinson, sees George painted against a cloudy sky, and was designed to show off his features to their best advantage. “Richard Cosway, who became painter to the Prince of Wales in 1785, was soon painting two or three …

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Simon Schama on American history
type: item
date: 2008-10-09T12:01:41.000Z
creator: Sir Simon Schama
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: On the eve of Barack Obama's election, Simon Schama spoke to Rob Attar about war, politics, race and religion and what it is that makes the USA unique
encoded: Q: What do you think it is that sets America apart from the rest of the world? A: There are two crucial things. The first is that the nation was the result of a kind of manifesto, or a statement of intent called the Declaration of Independence, with all the impossibly optimistic ideals embedded in it. In other words, everybody is entitled to liberty and equality without problems or contradictions. The Declaration has been a living document for Americans, who are much more soaked in history than Europeans in particular believe. So there is this sense that to be an American is to subscribe to a set of political ideas rather than simply a culture, a habit, a landscape or a way of life. The second point about what makes America different is that it is a country that has always been founded on immigration and has actually welcomed immigration. That isn’t to say that America hasn’t violated some of its optimism about all nations being melted together. This aim has often been broken more than it’s been observed. In America, coming from somewhere else and still being a full American – a Polish American, an African American or a Chinese American – is possible in a way which can’t be taken for granted anywhere else in the world. Q: How much of America’s history was shaped by the early European settlers? A: I think they were important when it comes to ecstatic religion. This idea that America is a place of rebirth began with the Puritans in the 17th century but it also received a great jolt from people like Methodists John Wesley and George Whitefield who preached wildly and enthusiastically in the 1740s. In America you don’t just lose the chains of your old place of birth but you somehow have access to a particular kind of revelation. That concept has remained extremely strong from the 18th century. When you see moments of ecstatic religion in America it has a very long inheritance from England. You have to go back to the wild, almost raving place that was Cromwellian England…

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