Spectator event: An evening with Simon Schama on the history of the Jews

There was a row earlier today when a leading figure in the EDL linked (inadvertently, he says) to a website of anti-Semitic sympathies. It is dispiriting that, more often than not, Judaism and Jewish people only receive mainstream media coverage when there is a public spat about anti-Semitism, for there is so much more to their history than persecution. As it happens, Simon Schama will be telling this, for want of a better phrase, “alternative history” in a BBC TV series this autumn. But readers of the Spectator don’t have to wait for the telly or the DVD because Schama will be giving us an exclusive talk at Cadogan Hall in London on Tuesday 17^th September.

Schama’s beguiling tale describes those moments when human history was changed by the thoughts, words or deeds of Jews. His research sounds down the millennia, taking in every country and people touched by the Jewish diaspora from Moses to our own times.