‘I Scribble, therefore I am’: this Cartesian quip is typical of Simon Schama, as is the comprehensive subtitle: ‘Writings on Ice Cream, Obama, Churchill and My Mother,’ among other topics, of course. This gives the flavour of the delights on offer: a miscellany of observations, reviews, mini-lectures and reminiscences written between 1979 and 2010.
Schama and Starkey, TV’s duo of history gurus, have helped to re-popularise a subject often dismissed as irrelevant; but whereas Starkey can come across as a quirky martinet, here Schama seems as benign and equable as everyone’s ideal grandfather. But don’t be deceived: his mind is as sharp as a scalpel.
Divided into eight sections under broad headings, his subjects range from Charlotte Rampling to Ruskin; art to democracy; fountain pens to food; Cunard to cookery. The warm, witty introduction sets the scene with extended metaphors about his ‘loopy’ handwriting, which he calls ‘the calligraphic equivalent of Tourette’s Syndrome’. From this we learn that he still uses ‘a fountain pen and notebook’, so does, in a sense, ‘scribble’: are these then the doodles or marginalia of the academic mind at rest? No; they are, rather, asides (dramatic or otherwise) from the main themes of a richly varied life.
Describing himself as ‘the Yid kid’ who grew up in Golders Green, passed 11-plus when ‘short-trousered, snake-belted, grimy-kneed, snot-nosed’, then later had difficulty choosing between literature and history for ‘A’ Level and Oxbridge, he sets out aspects of his life, career and core values, often indirectly, when writing, lecturing or travelling. But these asides are versatile in subject and style: sometimes conversational (‘Sail Away’), at others analytical (‘Gothic Language’).
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