The historian Simon Schama was born in London in 1945. He studied at Cambridge and wrote his first book, Patriots and Liberators, in 1977, though it was with Citizens, his 1989 history of the French Revolution, that he came to wider notice. Alongside a prolific writing career, Schama has made numerous TV series including A History of Britain (2000-2002) and Simon Schama’s Power of Art (2006). Knighted in 2018, Schama lives in New York with his wife, Virginia Papaioannou, a geneticist. On 27 August, he’ll be speaking at Edinburgh College of Art about his latest book, Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations (Jonathan Cape).
