Wordy

By Simon Schama

‘Wordy is about the intoxication of writing; my sense of playful versatility; different voices for different matters: the polemical voice for political columns; the sharp-eyed descriptive take for profiles; poetic precision in grappling with the hard task of translating art into words; lyrical recall for memory pieces. And informing everything a rich sense of the human comedy and the ways it plays through historical time.
 
It's also a reflection on writers who have been shamelessly gloried in verbal abundance; the performing tumble of language - those who have especially inspired me - Dickens and Melville; Joyce and Marquez.’ Simon Schama

Sir Simon Schama has been at the forefront of the arts, political commentary, social analysis and historical study for over forty years. As a teacher of Art History and an award-winning television presenter of iconic history-based programming, Simon is equally a prolific bestselling writer and award-winning columnist for many of the world’s foremost publishers, broadsheet newspapers, periodicals and magazines.
 
His commissioned subjects over the years have been numerous and wide ranging – from the music of Tom Waits, to the works of Sir Quentin Blake; the history of the colour blue, to discussing what skills an actor needs to create a unique performance of Falstaff. Schama’s tastes are wide-ranging as they are eloquent, incisive, witty and thought provoking and have entertained and educated the readers of some of the world’s most respected publications - the Times, the Guardian, the New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar and Rolling Stone magazine.
 
Wordy is a celebration of one of the world’s foremost writers. This collection of fifty essays chosen by the man himself stretches across four decades and is a treasure trove for all those who have a passion for the arts, politics, food and life.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Release date: May 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781471180118

Simon Schama

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York. His award-winning books include Scribble, Scribble, Scribble; The American Future: A History; National Book Critics Circle Award winner Rough Crossings; The Power of Art; The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age; Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution; Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations); Landscape and Memory; Rembrandt's Eyes; and the History of Britain trilogy. He has written and presented forty television documentary films for the BBC, PBS, and The History Channel, including the Emmy-winning Power of Art, on subjects that range from John Donne to Tolstoy.

Reviews for Wordy

[cpg_7 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“’Why don’t you just stick to history?’ the trolls yell when they take exception to something I might have tweeted, or written in the pages of the Financial Times about Brexit or the giddy black comedy that is the Trump presidency.” (Simon Schama, Wordy, p. 261) But calling them as I see them: 1) Back-to-back essays in this collection are about the horrors of Trump’s America and are uncharacteristically repetitive. 2) Shortly thereafter the reader is whiplashed by hagiographies of Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger.3) When Schama writes about the contemporary art scene, he seems to spend a lot of time celebrating that which is not in fact praiseworthy. 4) Is there anybody but another foody that is interested in the writings of Simon the Foody?Yes, Schama is an immensely talented writer, and reading roughly 7000 pages of his has left me wanting more. But his historical writings, where he forgets himself and focuses on the past, are the ones to be treasured.