Professor Sir Simon Schama, CBE, FRSL, FBA, Honorary Fellow of Christ's College and University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University, New York, will speak in the Senate-House at 5.30 p.m. on Monday, 15 October. These prestigious lectures commemorate Sir Leslie Stephen, of Trinity Hall, the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography.
Renowned as an academic, presenter, writer and critic, Simon Schama has won both the W.H. Smith Prize and a National Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, the National Book Critics' Circle Award for Non-Fiction, and a Wolfson Prize for History. Eighteen books include: Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780-1813; Two Rothschilds and the Land of Israel; The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age; Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution; Landscape and Memory; Rembrandt's Eyes; A History of Britain (trilogy); Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution; The Power of Art; and most recently Belonging.
A former Trevelyan Lecturer in Cambridge, he has given major public lectures at Oxford, Harvard, Yale and the National Gallery in Washington, and has also delivered the Jerusalem Lectures. He is the multiple award-winning writer and presenter of many television documentaries, including Rembrandt, A History of Britain, The Power of Art, and Civilisations. Sir Simon's collected essays on art have appeared as Hang-Ups, Essays on Painting (Mostly), his art criticism has received the National Magazine Award, and he has published twin novellas; Dead Certainties: (Unwarranted Speculations) as well as writing and adapting work for the theatre. He is Contributing Editor at the Financial Times.
All are welcome. Senior members of the University are asked to wear their gowns.