citizens a chronicle of the french revolution by simon schama

He is now professor in history and art history at Columbia where he has written Landscape and Memory (1996) which received the W H Smith Literary Award and Rembrandt’s Eyes (1999). However, Schama’s emphasis on the terror and violence of the revolution and his argument, that from its beginning it was a ‘ sacrament of blood’, ensured it has never found a publisher in France. Citizens, which was written at lightening speed: 900 pages in only 18 months, won the 1990 NCR Book Award. Here he wrote The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (1987), Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (1989) and Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations) (1991): an a unusual linking of the death of General Wolfe at Quebec in 1759 and the murder of a doctor, George Parkman, by a Harvard Professor in 1849. Tired of the Oxford system (he once described his experience as being ‘like a gerbil on a treadmill’) and enticed by the freedom of US Academic life, he moved to America in 1980, becoming Professor of History at Harvard. At Oxford he met his wife, Ginny Papaioannou a geneticist from California. While at Oxford he wrote Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780-1813 (1977), which won the Wolfson Literary Award, and Two Rothschilds and the Land of Israel (1979).

Schama remained at Christ’s for 10 years after his degree, becoming a fellow and then director of Studies, before moving to Brasenose College Oxford. However, his approach is contentious and invites criticism of subjectivity and populism from academic circles. One of the hallmarks of Schama’s work is his flair for description: ‘he gets arcane matters to walk, in fact dance, off the page’ according to fellow historian Peter Hennessy. It was Plumb’s influence which instilled in him the importance of narrative and written style in order to gain an audience for history outside academia.

Here he was taught by Sir John Plumb whose other students: Linda Colley, Roy Porter and John Brewer are now central to British historical thought. Forced to choose between the two he opted to read history at Christ’s College, Cambridge. When his parents moved to London he won a scholarship to Haberdashers’ Aske’s School where his two great loves were English and History. The son of a textile merchant with Lithuanian and Turkish grandparents, he spent his early years in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex.

Citizens a chronicle of the french revolution by simon schama